Day 2

Another day of diving... nothing too crazy to report. We went to Flat Cay today, a couple miles of the coast of St. Thomas. We did 1 dive this morning and then a deeper one to about 70 feet this afternoon. I was looking for the corals I need to collect samples from. There isn't as much green algae here as there is in the Florida Keys, but there certainly is a lot of brown algae!

After our deep dive this afternoon we decided to try to swim around the small island we were diving off of, but the waves were pretty big (4-6 ft) and the current was ripping, so we only made it half way around. It was fun to body-surf the waves back to the boat! I also saw some beautiful Elkhorn coral, the coral that is now on the threatened species list. I was happy to see it alive and well. There are pictures of Elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) in my pics from the NOAA cruise.

Hope you're enjoying the week! How are those vertebrates doing? I saw a big stingray today, what kind of fish is he?? Does are his bones made of?

Day 1

Just a quick update... I felt like I was sleeping in the middle of the rainforest last night, I might as well have! These are all the crazy noises I heard at one point in time or another.... frogs, crickets, geckos, roosters, fighting dogs, gusts of wind, rain, the futon falling apart in the living room, oh yes and the power going on and off as the wind knocked the power lines down! Apparently a tropical depression/storm was sitting over top of St. Thomas last night but it thankfully moved past us by this morning.

We did 2 hour and a half long dives today at a site about 200 yards off the beach, which we swam too.... needless to say, we got quite a workout today. We counted corkscrew anemones and measured their size and number of symbionts (what's a symbiont again?). These anemones have all kinds of commensal shrimp and crabs that live within the protection of the anemones tentacles. No one knows if the shrimp provide any benefit for the anemone yet. Maybe we will find out!

Check out this link to see a pic of the anemone and shrimp: http://www.deepseaimages.com/dsilibrary/data/832/2006-05-23-01-57-56.jpg

Hi everyone!

Me and my labmate, Mike, finally made it to St. Thomas this evening (Monday). Yes, that's a day late! We had quite an ordeal yesterday trying to get here. We were supposed to fly from Atlanta to Charlotte to St. Thomas, but our first flight was canceled, by the time we got to charlotte we missed our St. Thomas flight, we were re-directed from USAir to American Airlines, and then American wouldn't let us get on our flight! When we asked why, and were clearly a bit upset since all our luggage was on the flight, but we were not, we had security called on us! Needless to say, it was a long day.... But, we spent the night in charlotte and flew out today. So we are here now and I'm enjoying a beautiful view of sailboats in the bay, the breeze off the water, and I'm finally able to relax a bit. I'll check in later. We dive tomorrow!

Santa Catalina Island, CA

Pics from Santa Catalina Island and the California coastline

NOAA Mission Logs

Check out the new link to the right - "NOAA Cruise Mission Logs" to read more stories from myself and other members of the scientific team. And stay tuned for pictures from my previous research in Kelp Forests off the California coast.

Dogfish

Who wanted to know about dogfish?? The name dogfish is applied to a number of small sharks found in the northeast Atlantic, Pacific, and Mediterranean.

Pics from the Foster

I'm back in Auburn and finally able to post some pictures. Check out my album of the 'best of the best' from everyones pictures on the cruise. Let me know if you have any questions!

I had an amazing time and could have stayed out at sea for another couple months. Life is quite enjoyable when you're surrounded by like-minded people, have chefs to cook for you, beautiful sunsets every night, and the ability to dive as much as you want, whenever you want. Now I remember why I chose this field. Sometimes you get swept up in the work and forget about what you're working for.

NOAA Nancy Foster Cruise