day 138: screefing the reef
Robin here via proxy, She loved snorkelling in the trenches today, a major highlight. Some hanging out with sweet little white tipped reef sharks happened. She is looking forward to her first night watch starting momentarily in the darkest night as the moon has already set; she will be proving to her taunting cousin that she is not afraid of the dark. She and Naomi are currently cackling about possible dog names for Naomi’s dog to be. Garbanzo is a current top contender. She would be writing herself but she got quite seasick cooking Chana Masala for us all. We will be very sad when she leaves and we have to cook for ourselves again. We may starve.
Miriam here, Bluebird is on the move again. We rallied early to give ourselves time to snorkel a couple of places en route to Viti Levu. First was Namara Island, an uninhabited one under the jurisdiction of Dravuni. I saw an adult sea turtle who was not interested in swimming with me but let me trail them fairly closely for a while before reminding me exactly how fast they were capable of moving. The reef was not as vibrant here though there were still some incredible fish and coral specimens to ogle. The highlight was a juvenile Emperor Angelfish who is black with concentric white and light blue circles and stripes, a truly striking being. Then we stopped at Herald Pass on the barrier reef surrounding the Dravuni cluster and Robin, Jamie, and I jumped in while Naomi stood off, which is a nautical term for meandering around without hitting anything while waiting for your crew to return.
We swam through the blue until a faint shadow of reef and the clicking scraping sounds of the ecosystem guided us to the pass. The visibility was not ideal but was clear enough to to explore the steep drop off, riddled with crevices and tunnels, dense with coral and teeming with fish. I’m finally having more success equalising my ears (now that I’ve stopped having milk in my tea) and was so pleased to be able to dive deep and peer into the shadowed crevices to glimpse some of the huge tasty looking fish hiding from the spear fishermen who were out hunting the pass. After a while, having lost Jamie and Robin due to my absurdly long fins that give me a definite speed advantage, I decided to swim over to the other side of the pass. This is where my mother ought to probably stop reading though I swear I was perfectly safe the whole time. I foolishly assumed it would be close based on the other passes we’ve snorkelled and that I’d be able to see it despite having already established the visibility was not ideal. I set out and quickly realised I had no idea where I was going. All I could see was the infinite blue of ocean depths and my heart rate increased a bit as I faced the fear of being alone in open ocean. I could see the fishing boat and Bluebird so I knew I could find my way and chose to set out for Bluebird. Who was in motion, obviously, though just barely so I thought I could catch her. I had a good, hard swim with several pep talks of the “you’re fine, everything is going to work out just fine” variety, and sure enough I caught the swim ladder and climbed on in, startling Naomi who had not seen me coming. She ferried me back to the reef, informed me that the far side of the pass was a few miles off, and I happily jumped back in to explore some more.
This experience taught me a lot. I learned that I need to be a bit more cautious and informed in my snorkelling choices, especially at passes, and that I maybe ought to keep better track of my dive buddies. But I also learned that I have become more confident in the ocean and have regained the swimming capacity I haven’t had since high school swim team (though a snorkel, mask, and absurdly long fins make it pretty easy to feel like an exceptional swimmer). I had an opportunity to face my fear and maintain the calm I knew I needed to stay safe. Altogether it felt like one of those high perceived risk, low actual risk situations that help you grow your capacity and conquer your fears. And I’m grateful for both the opportunity for that and the uneventful outcome!
Jamie here: Big fish took our our lure this evening. Drag full on, the line whizzed out, finally snapping just before we completely ran out. There are some monsters out here. A smaller one next time please! Word of the day continues to be a popular segment. Thank you for the hundreds of messages of support, our team will try to reply to all of them. Word of the day is now being translated into 72 languages over the world and a coffee table book is being published containing all up to date WODs. Tonight’s WOD comes from big brother Malcom Crum. Thank you to our Mapua fans out there! WOD: reckon. Reckon - approximate or guess, usually supported by some amount of preliminary evidence. Used in a senny: watch out for that reef or we be reckon our boat on it!
Naomi here, Well I’ve left Robin to it with just the stars for company , dim glow of lights on Viti Levu to avoid please, we are sailing under just the jib which is nice and mellow, hopefully we will arrive at Tavarua not too much before daybreak and who knows there might be a bit of a wave! Then off to vuda point to meet up with our new crew Matt and also drop our resident chef Robin off :( …. We had fun snorkelling this morning, we all saw a new fish we have been hoping to see ! Sort of a new fish, we have seen the emperor angelfish before but now we have seen the juvenile ! Which look different they are black with blue and white stripes some of the stripes go in circles and there’s some dots too, they look really impressive. Also we saw…. A white,,,,, creature? It was a white,,,, collection…. Of,,, units, living on a rock like a coral or an anemomone would and . They were…. Like little claws, it was like a whole lot of little claws, each in circles grabbing inwards,,, and each claw was fern frondy, and it was all , a big mass of them, wafting in the current and making grabby motions. It was very strange, there were a number of these little,,, colonies. We saw a new type of anenome colony too and a very impressive wall of anenomenen with lots of nemos. That was at namara, when we went Out to the pass we also saw new fish, some of which are not in the reef fish book, we try to remind ourselves that a rose by any other name (is that another way of saying names aren’t important?) , but we do like to know their names. Some parts of the reef definitely didn’t seem as healthy but the edge of the reef, which was, it wasn’t even a steep drop off it was an overhang, there was no gradual fade into the deep it was just sheer into the abyss…. The edge was much healthier and had fun tunnels to swim through, and it was really cool to dive down and see the different types of fish who live a bit deeper. Time to lay in bed with my eyes shut !
Bluebird out