Under the sea

Nothing too exciting has been going on here.  We have both been working a lot, but we've managed to fit in some diving.

We dove near Tengan River with Masaru and Daisuke and found some neat critters, including this hermit crab and the shrimp in the sponge below.

Nate found an empty giant clam shell that he took back for a friend who has been wanting one. 

 The local fisherman laughed at him for bringing an empty shell back. We told them we were hungry, so we ate the clam underwater.

A group of us from the lab did some Nitrox diving with Taku, seen below using his rebreather.

  

Ctrl + click on this photo...it is really cool.

On the nitrox dives we were at 25-35 m depth (~80-115 feet) and saw an incredibly diverse coral reef with a lot of different live corals, cool tube worms, ascidians, and sponges.

The ascent from these deep dives was very blue.

We found a handmade Ryukyus glass set of glasses at the recycle shop and bought them to bring back to the states with us.  That shit made us happy.

The last supper

Yesterday we had the last supper with Obuchi-san. The General is leaving Okinawa for his new job in Kochi, on mainland Japan.


We made Saag chicken (Spinach chicken curry) and Nate's split pea soup and had a lot of fun!

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.