Maug- Day 3

Still raining, but we did see little patches of blue sky this afternoon. We surveyed the north island today and it is composed of beautiful layers of exposed lava flows and pyroclastic deposits that are cut by radial dikes (lava tubes which used to feed the volcano to form all of the layers).

Due to large swell outside of the caldera, we had to keep all of our sites on the inside. We did get a nice tour of the outside though while scoping out our next dive sites.

Colony of Pocillopora meandrina.

Cool find of the day: Bubble Snails- they are actually sea slugs who are too large to fit all the way into their shells.

This is the happiest rock I've ever seen- I was very surprised to see all of the colors on a rock. The colors are a combination of crustose coralline algae, sponges, tunicates, coral and other algae!

Kerry and I had a little extra help on our dive today- here's Gaetano earning his pay reeling in our PAM float.

More rain at Maug

It continued to rain throughout the day here at Maug. We started on the outside of the West Island- it was a gorgeous reef, but we had quite a bit of current which made the dive pretty difficult and pretty short! I would have really liked to spend more time exploring because it was quite diverse.

On the inside, it was more sheltered and we had better conditions. There were more huge colonies of Porites which were becoming eroded at the base. We saw quite a few which had already tumbled over. This one looked like a huge mushroom.

The coolest part of this dive was seeing two octopuses! Kerry spotted them both on our second transect. One of them let us hang around for awhile and get some good photos. He (I don't know that it was a he, but I'm calling it a he) even crawled out of his hole! I'd never seen one this big before the they usually hid in the holes. We could see almost all of his arms and he wrapped them around his head at one point and poked them through his siphon! I could have sat there forever watching him!


Can you spot the flounder in this photo? It was a master of camouflage and even changed colors to match the darker sand when it was swimming. I love their little sideways faces!

Maug

I went diving inside a volcano today! I had an incredible day as we began our surveys around Maug. The weather tried to dampen our spirits, but we relied on positive attitudes, happy thoughts and lots of show tunes to get us through the day! Through the driving rain, this was my first glimpse of Maug's East Island:

Maug is a large volcanic crater, or caldera, that is now flooded by the sea. The caldera formed after a massive ancient eruption caused the summit of the volcano to collapse. It is unknown exactly when this explosion took place as there have not been any eruptions to occur since the island was discovered in 1522. The three islets that make up Maug are the remnants of the circular crater rim- North Island, East Island and West Island.

The caldera is large (1.4 miles in diameter) enough for our small boats, and even the ship, to drive into so that we could dive inside the crater. Below sea level, the crater is a bowl-shaped basin that is as much as 250 meters (820 feet) deep. At the center of the crater, a lava dome rises to within 20 m (65 ft) of the surface and represents the most recent output from this volcano.
The weather did not improve as the day went on and it was raining every time we surfaced from a dive. This is Kerry's response to seeing that it was raining topside after our second dive.

But, things improved as we did a dive on one of the very steep walls inside the caldera. It was completely covered by huge plating colonies of Porites rus. It was one of the most beautiful dive sites I've ever seen!

Near the end of our dive, we came across this "bubble patch" where the sand was warm to the touch and you could see bubbles of volcanic gases rising from the sediment! We had a great time playing in the bubbles!

Top of the Chain

I had to take a look at the map to figure out where I am today.......the islands seem to keep flying by, but we made it to the top of the Mariana chain today.

We are at the island called Farallon de Pajaros (Bird Island). It's another uninhabited volcanic cone (sorry to make it sound so ordinary). The cone peaks at 1,180 ft and has a diameter of 1.2 miles.

This island has very little vegetation- only small low lying plants. No trees which gave it a very barren feel rather than a lush tropical island. There were quite a few landslide scars running down the cone.

Our first site of the day was by far the most interesting. While there was quite a bit of black sand, we came across a little Pocillopora garden near the end of our transect. The outcropping had hundreds of small Pocillopora colonies of various colors- white, tan, yellow, and blue.

I found this guy, Pogonoperca punctata (the spotted soapfish), hiding under a rock sporting a cute little soul patch (or fleshy barbel used to locate prey). It gets its name from a toxic soapy mucus secretion produced in its skin.

After our first dive, the visibility became increasingly bad causing us to actually lose our transect tape (the fish team found it for us!) and abort one dive! We were really close to shore and a green haze kept floating through the water causing each dive to have an eerie feeling.......I felt like I was in an episode of Scooby Doo when the fog always rolls in whenever something bad is going to happen (Kerry and I both have overactive imaginations!). Anyway, here is a photo of our site to my left (away from shore).......

And a photo of our actual site, to my right (towards shore). Which would you rather work in?

Puppets in Ascuncion

So, it's a small island, but because it's part of the new Marianas Trench National Marine Monument (established in January 2009) we added a day of surveys at Ascuncion. I think the reefs here are the prettiest I've seen so far during this leg.

View of the reef at 80 feet! I saw a little whitetip reef shark, as well as, a little nurse shark. Nurse sharks are very common in the Caribbean and seeing the little guy reminded me of home!

This is a very rare fish species, Bluefishious washclothicus, and has only been documented in the shallow reefs of Ascuncion Island. It befriended Kerry right away!

Paula spotted this sea star during her fish survey.

Here's a picture of the Bluefishious washclothicus trying to hide from the Fish Team. Thanks for the puppets Annette- we had a lot of fun with them!!

Today was a very fun day- we had all girls on our boat (a rare occurrence) and had a good day of diving. We took it a little light though and only conducted three dives (mostly because one of our locations was a little too rough and murky to survey) and because it was our last day of diving before a much needed day of rest!

Paula is all smiles on her safety stop!

Asuncion

Ascuncion Island is the third northernmost independent island in the Northern Mariana Island.
It is composed of a single stratovolcano cone, 857m (2830 ft) at the tallest point, and has a land area of about 2.82 square miles. The last known eruption was in 1906 and the island is uninhabited.

Most coastlines are rocky or cliff-like and there are a number of deep ravines breaking up the slopes. Our first site of the day was located at the largest riff in the island and we had to move a little to the left to avoid the small (and not so small) rocks which were sliding down the hill.

The reefs are beginning to become a little more complex the further north we go. Our first site of the day was a non-continuous forereef with a huge pinnacle in the middle. Lots of coral cover and cool species.

I haven't been seeing many big schools of fish, but this group of chubs (Genus Kyphosus) tried to make me one of their own by schooling around me today.

Saw some interesting bubble corals today including:

Euphyllia ancora

Euphyllia divisa

Here's a shot of the Gun Club (aka the oceanography team).

Pagan Hot Tubs

Mount Pagan continues to produce gray and white smoke while we conducted surveys during our last day here. I have to admit that I enjoyed what the island had to offer on top of the water rather than under.

Most of the reefs are coated with thick black cyanobacteria- a filamentous algae otherwise known as blue- green algae. It gives the reefs a bit of a dirty feeling as cyanobacteria blooms are often associated with pollution and the cyanobacteria can smoother corals and even other algae.

We had one little white tip shark come and check us out, but did not seem bothered by us.

I still love seeing these large anemones and their associated anemone fish. This one was large enough to have two adults and a bunch of little threespot damselfish (the tiny black and white fish).

This is a crinoid or feather star. They are related to sea urchins and sea stars and feed by extending their arms into the water column.

The evil crown-of-thorns sea stars (Acanthaster)......dunh, dunh, dunh (ominous music). My friend, Molly, collects arms from the COTs and conducts genetic studies to determine links between Acanthaster outbreaks. COTs are voracious predators and can consume up to 6 square meters of coral per year.

The fun of the day came when we were told about a geothermal hot spring on the island. We climbed up on the rocks and hopped over into the little spring which had crystal blue water. There was even a little swim through leading back out. It was nice and relaxing!

Marie and I in the hot spring!

Pagan Arches

Our second day at Pagan included surveys along the east coast of the island and two awesome arches!

Boating through these arches put our coxswain, Scotty's, skills to the test, but it was awesome to get up close and personal!

The coolest thing was seeing the huge colonies of Porites- some of them were up to 10 meters (33 ft) across! With a growth rate up to 1.5cm (or 0.015 meters) per year, this colony could be up to 666 years old!
Here's Kerry working hard holding the transect tape! I was laughing so hard when I looked up from the transect tape and found her sitting on the bottom, I flooded my mask!

And there is no place like Pagan to have a puppet show! Thanks Annette!