day 134: lets talk about mums fungus
Jamie here: Today we woke to a blue sky day, the sun was shining. Last night there was a massive rain event. It rained heavily for three hours on bluebird and we lay in bed and listened to it, wondering if the dinghy was going to sink. The sky must have rained itself out of clouds. We are pancakes for breakfast fried in butter with real organic maple syrup from uncle trader joes. Today was our pass snorkelling day and it didn’t disappoint. For some reason I thought the best snorkelling had been done in French Polynesia but it was very amazing here. Beautiful healthy coral and awesome visibility with all sorts of cool fish to see. We scored a mellow incoming current and it was a successful trip indeed. We came home and ate crackers with pate and had a nap. In the evening we went for a quick mission in the dinghy before it got dark. I got dropped off in amongst the mangroves because I wanted to climb some hills I’d been looking at. They were cleared up the top but to get there I had to push through dense dense sugar cane grass stuff. I thought this might have been hip high but once I got into it it was actually double overhead high. I shuffled through it like a piggy and found my way to a mango tree which I climbed and watched ants and butterfly’s. We agreed on a rendezvous time so I left and returned the way I came, crashing through an acre or two of sugar cane. I got down to the mangrove swamp and inundated myself and realised I was covered in rashes and cuts but worth it for the mission. The girls went to a beach or something. WOD (from Robin): sanctify - to designate something as sacred thus protecting it Used in a senny: I fell overboard and would have sanctify didn’t have my life jacket on.
Hello it’s Naomi
The rain last night was a loooot and the wind died when the rain came down so another cool thing that happened was the anchor rode got caught around the keel when a little breeze came up again :) so our stern was facing into the wind and the little waves were slap slap slapping against the hull. Normally also we can hear if you listen well the little waves slippety slapping against Mauruuru our dinghy but once she filled up with water you couldn’t hear that part any more. Anyways no one much felt like diving in crocodile infested waters in the middle of the night so I lay in bed wondering how to fix it, we have pretty much all our rode out but the only thing I could think of was to let out heaps to take the pressure off and hope it sort of slides off and sorts itself out. This would of entailed removing all the rode from the gypsy and tying another rope on to it to create some extra line , then bringing it back in. Needless to say I didn’t do this instead I lay in bed thinking about it and wondering about when the dinghy would sink, and when it got light I slipped into the creepily murky water and slipped the rope off the keel where it was hooked up. And removed a few buckets of water from Mauruuru, making no discernible difference.
We had such a nice slow morning after not sleeping much during the rain event and then it was time to go snorkelling!! Wowww what amazing coral, some new types of fishies too but not a whole lot of fish like in the ciguatera infested waters of French Polynesia but boooyyyy the coral was amazing, so many different types ! Lots of nemos, one amazing thing I saw was perhaps some type of stag horn coral brownish with bluey purple tips , it was a very large growth of it about the size of two belted Galloways, lots of the cute little turquoise gold fishies, and for some reason so many beautiful and aggressive nemos everywhere, as we drifted over it with the current I could see the anenomes all in a ground cover at the base of the stag horn corals, they had a whole big city to aggressively shoo other fish away from !
We dove both sides of the pass and the colour and variety of coral really was pretty mind blowing, plus me and Robin saw a cuuute sea turtle, smaller than Crush but bigger than Squirt. Also jamie and I saw a sea snake the white and black kind. It caused another heated debate aboard bluebird about the difference between sea snakes and like eels that look like sea snakes ? It is as yet unresolved.
Then we all looked at my tropical skin fungus which is flourishing in this environment, it seems to prefer Fiji to French Polynesia, and is creeping from my shoulder up my neck and under my chin, shortly it will enter my brain and I will not be able to leave the tropics anymore.
Today we had yummy pancakes, pate and crackers, delicious Dahl with tamarind long beans and Dhosas, and I made the coconut custard pie thing for pudding
Miriam here, The rain last night was intense, a proper monsoon dump that woke me from a dream of a flooding house to shut the cracked hatch that was allowing a little sprinkle to rain upon my sleeping head. I woke to an incredibly sunny morning, the clearest and the least humid yet after the clouds wrung out all their moisture upon us in the night, and began my day bailing Mauruuru. She was filled with water to a few inches below the top of her stern and I’m glad our shoes decided to stay on board. We have a habit of leaving the dingy full of things, snorkelling gear and shoes primarily, but after last night we’ve emptied her just in case.
The pass was phenomenal, crystal clear visibility and a steep drop off that revealed layers upon layers of diverse corals and the fish that inhabit each niche. We went to the outside edge and let the incoming current pull us back in, trailing Mauruuru as we went. I was the first in and landed in a massive school of brilliant blue and yellow fusiliers, completely surrounded by their sleek colourful bodies. The sheer variety of colours and textures of coral is breathtaking, saturated jewel tones, subtle earth tones, spirals and antlers and convoluted mazes. Soft corals undulated as white strands and purple bubble fronds in crannies and upon close inspection many hard corals were covered with the feathery little polyps of new growth trembling in the current’s thrall. So many little spiral cone Christmas tree sea creatures (Naomi’s name for them…definitely open to learning their actual name) in myriad colours growing on the hard coral, disappearing into themselves with the slightest provocation. So many incredible fish as well; it is such a challenge to remember all of the identifying characteristics long enough to make it back to the identification book. Butterflyfish in all their variations of high contrast yellow and white and black in stripes and spots and chevrons, parrotfish pastel rainbows, wrasse with their neon mazes and speckles, chromis and anthias bright colour bursts. We were in the water spellbound for about three hours, earning our afternoon naps.
And Robin and Naomi and I saw the Masked Shining Parrot today! After dropping Jamie off for his scramble, we lingered in the mangroves in a clearing listening to two call back and forth and our patience was rewarded by seeing one in flight quite close. A dark green back, long tail, and dusky scarlet breast characterise this handsome large parrot; I am grateful to see this endemic bird and finally put a visual to the sounds we’ve been hearing. I had a good tree climb today too which I always love. The Mighty Boosh and pudding is about to happen so I’m off!
Robin here, everything’s pretty much covered but let’s see what I can add…The snorkeling was incredible, so fun to jump in at the entrance to the pass and let the strong current drift us back towards the island. We could float at the surface and enjoy the bright colour and teeny vibrant fish or dive as far down the shelf as lungs would allow and check out layer upon layer of life. So cool to observe how biodiversity changes at different depths. There were also some absolutely massive coral formations that created mushroom like hooded covers for schools of fish that we could dive under, looking up to see the light filtering through holes and gently waving fans of vegetation. One such coral formation formed a tunnel that Naomi bravely swam through, I was truly just about to muster the courage to do it myself, really I was, when everyone moved on and of course I had to follow. Sightings included a reef shark (!) , a sea turtle, many nemos, and a gigando sea cucumber slug thing like 2 feet long and 8 inches wide, covered in spikeys?? When we returned home I read and semi napped on the bench cushion that got soaked last night that we put out on the deck to dry in the sun, luxurious. And did some shell hunting on the wee beach and made dal and tamarind green beans for dinner. Thank you to everyone who got back to us regarding our questions, we have a few more queries we hope our devoted research team may track down answers to: what kind of coral is ok to touch. If any? What coral stings? Are the stinging soft corals actually not corals at all but anemones (this is where the nemos live)?
Bluebird out