Miyakojima

Kris and Megumi took a quick trip to Miyakojima, an island between Okinawa and Ishigaki. It is a very beautiful island with natural beaches and lots of live coral.




Megumi's friend Hikaru lives on the island so we had lots of great company on our trip!



The weather was great the first day, but then a mini-typhoon came along, so we did a lot of sightseeing and not so much diving. What we did see in the ocean was really beautiful.




We went to a family-run sugar cane factory, which has changed my view of sugar forever. We watched this family (four generations) make brown sugar from the liquid in harvested sugar cane. After the cane is dried in the road (literally spread out on the road), it is used to fuel the fire to heat the liquid sugar. The liquid is then cooked and moved between vats until it becomes very thick. Then it is stirred and dried to become what we know as brown sugar.



These piles of sugar are then hand scooped into plastic bags,weighed, and sealed. The neighbors can smell when the sugar is ready and come to buy some. The rest is sent to the market to sell. The video below shows one part in the sugar making process.

On the road again

Kris went to a biodiversity workshop in Singapore where she helped with collecting and identifying amphipods for the survey. The workshop was on Pulau Ubin, a small island on the north side of Singapore. Below is a photo of a aquaculture house that are all around the island. The next photo is of our "sorting center" at the resort we were staying at for the workshop.



Something I found very interesting in Singapore is the coffee in a bag instead of in cups. I guess it is more convenient to carry multiple bags than cups. There was a pond at the resort that had many sting rays and these trevali swimming around.



Below is a photo of the take from a trawl that we pulled in and a photo of a mud lobster mound that we were digging up for crabs and lobsters.



On an off day, I went to the Singapore zoo, which was really a great zoo. They have free ranging orangutangs that are literally moving along these ropes just above your head. It was really crazy to be so close to a huge orangutang! They have many different primates including the proboscis monkey below.



While walking through the zoo, these elephants were walking along the path only 5 feet away from me. They were surrounded by trainers, but it was still very surreal!




After being home from Singapore for a day, Nate, Kris, Masaru, and Javier packed up Masaru's van (see photo below) to take the ferry over to Zamami Island for three days.



It is mating season for humpback whales at Zamami and the surrounding islands, but this is the only whale we saw on the trip when coming into port. In the summer, many sea turtles nest on Zamami beaches, so there are signs up to protect them.



We bought this tent at a recycle shop to camp on Zamami...and it only took the four of us an hour to put it up! It was quite roomy and all four of us slept very well in it.



We drove around looking for suitable diving entry points and this was not one of them. At night we built a fire in the "kitchen area" as fires are not allowed anywhere else on the island.



Below is a photo of Nate near one of the giant coral heads we saw while diving and a photo of the reef on one of our dives. We heard several whales while in the water although we never saw one.



We got a lot of amphipods from sponges and ascidians on our second dive including the two circled in the photo below. (If you control-click on the photo you may be able to see them.)



The video below shows a squid we collected in the trawl in Singapore changing colors.

Lab Camp at Oku

This weekend several lab members went "camping" up at the northern end of the island. We rented a cabin and took turns cooking. Nate and Kris made some gumbo for dinner on Friday night. Haruka helped to perfect the roux and the gumbo was a big hit. We finished off the leftovers on waffles for breakast.



Some of us made onigiri to bring for lunch after diving while others watched Curious George.




It was a nice sunny day so we went for a dive. We heard whales the whole time we were in the water. The video below isn't much to look at, but if you listen carefully, you can hear a whale in the background. We saw a lot of neat critters on the dive, including this "flame scallop" that extends red tentacles into the water and the brittle star that Nate is playing with.





Dinner the next night was yakiniku! Takuma and Yukari made BBQ meat and vegetables that was so delicious.



After dinner we surprised Obuchi-san with his going away present. Obuchi-san is the other post-doc in the lab and he is leaving to start a new job at a research lab on mainland Japan. Knowing how much he loves t-shirts, we designed a t-shirt with faces of all of our current lab members on it. He was very surprised and loved the shirts! There is a closeup of the shirt below. If you hit control and click on the picture, it will show you a larger version.

Stupid Human Tricks

Last weekend six lab members, including Kris, went to Izu Peninsula (mainland Japan) to accomplish one of the stupidest human tricks around. We went SCUBA diving in 13 C water! That translates to about 55 degrees F. We flew into Tokyo and drove in an over-sized van down to the peninsula, stopping many times along the way. We ate lunch at the Odosarawa Fish Center where this 4000 yen (~$50) flounder was for sale.



Nine hours later, we arrived at Shimoda Research Station and searched for our dive gear that we shipped ahead of us. We then tried on our rented dry suits for our dives the next morning.




The suits didn't fit perfectly, and it was quite an adventure getting them on. The next morning we left for the dive shop at 7 am. We received a brief introduction to diving in dry suits, which is quite a bit more complicated than diving in wetsuits. We headed out the first dive site on a boat...did I mention that the water was 13C? I think the air was a bit cooler than this or at least it felt like it when we got back from the dive.



Everyone's suits leaked except for Takuma's so we were very happy to sit in the hot water tubs for awhile before the second dive. For dinner we ate pizza and this gratin dish that was
reminiscent of chicken a la king.



We did two dives the next day as well, and again everyone suits leaked. Kris was so cold that she skipped the third dive that everyone else went on. We did get a lot of great samples, so the trip was worth it! The last night we went to a local sushi restaurant and had a delicious dinner.



Izu is famous for growing wasabi, so souveniers included fresh wasabi (freshly grated in the photo below), which was so delicious and Wasabi-shu, a rice wine flavored with wasabi!



After this weekend, I think I'll stick to warm water diving!
Off to Oku at the North end of Okinawa for a weekend of fun with the lab!