Hi guys! Well, today started out with a bad storm overnight. I thought the tent was going to blow away! I had my shoes ready by the door but then I realised, where am I going to go? I am on an island! Anyhow I woke up alive in the morning along with my roommates and also the research crew so that was good.

Anyhow we only did one dive this morning. It was alright, but the visibility (or ‘viz’ as divers call it) was very low. This means there was lots of sand and ‘bits’ stirred up and floating around in the water making it murky. You can’t see very far and low viz also makes taking long distance photos difficult. The good news is that I took my camera and got some okay photos of clownfish, a nudibranch and some other reef life. The bad news is that we didn’t see any mantas.

Because the weather was so bad in the afternoon, (40 knot winds) all dives were cancelled. This was bad news. But the good news is that it was lucky I braved the weather and went out on the first dive in the morning! Because we weren’t doing any oceanography tasks (plankton sampling etc.) on the small boat either, we passed the afternoon by doing lots of lab work. This could have been bad news, there was some very exciting good news... we have discovered some new mantas!

I have uploaded some pics to the website of manta number #437... and just in case that didn’t work, I emailed them to Mrs Tuck too. He is a very pretty manta, he has no shark bites, missing/broken tail or cephalic lobes. Lots of mantas seem to have massive bites out of their pectoral fins like someone took a bite out of a pizza slice! I was thinking we could call him Benton, but I am open to other suggestions based on his spots, behaviour, etc. Take a look at the photos and have 3 ideas ready for when we Skype tomorrow (Wednesday) at 1:00pm! We need to have a few suggestions because after naming over 400+ mantas some of the names might be taken. Please be creative too, I don’t want to have to tell Dr. Townsend the new manta’s name is ‘Fluffy’ or ‘Cuddles’!!!

Well that’s it for today’s highlights. I hope the internet works well enough for me to connect via Skype tomorrow! There is a big time delay, so after someone speaks you have to wait a few seconds to hear the sound. I will also try and type messages as we speak. Make sure you have some good questions for Dr. Townsend (Kathy) and I!

Cheers,

Miss Q