So, after mentioning that the locals eat EVERYTING, including turtle, guess what I saw on the reef yesterday! :D yet again I was the only person to see it (I was the only person to see the shark, people will start to think I am lying soon) and I after I had watch it glide around for a bit I though I would snorkel shout (sounds like an elephant underwater) and then actually should to get people’s attention, but by then it had swam away. In a way I was kind of relieved as we had local kids with us (who had already picked up every sea cucumber they could find which are valuable to sell to japan) and I dreading the thought of them trying to chase the turtle, though I think the turtle would win the race!

On firday (wait for it…) I LEFT THE ISLAND! Gasp, shocker I know. The local schools sport championship type thing (you can tell I was playing attention to the reason why we left the island) was being held at Levuka, once the colonial capital of Fiji (good old British we get everywhere; the queen is still smiling from the Fijian dollar bill). This was practically a city compared to Uluibau, no joke there were shops and everything!  I bought bread and ate a burger! Life was good.  Anyway I think the teams did quite well (my sports attention span lasted one netball match before I went for a wonder) and a fun day was had by all, though the highlight was a (expensive) drunk dial from bud :D.

On the boat trip back to ‘the island’ (I could get a lost type thing going here) something strange and mysterious happened…. 

We had ahem, slightly overloaded the boat with people so were going at what can only be classed a a slow pace, (mum could possibly swim faster) and the sun was setting, so all in all very scenic. However, one darkness had descended, and all you could see, hear and smell was the ocean (do I sound ominous enough yet?) lights started flashing in the water, bright blue ranging the size of a pin head to a finger nail suddenly all around us. Naturally the instinct was to GRAB THEM! But all we caught was flashing water, this when on for about 10 minutes, the boat going through a swarm of blue flashes (the vote is that they are some kind of phytoplankton/dinoflaggelate/spawn) and then stopped. After than it was just the occasional flash of glow in the dark coral, you know, the ‘usual’ (still very very exciting: not done any night snorkels yet as I am too much of a scardy cat but I will force myself, just to see the glowing coral).  just as we had calmed down (there were too many excited biologist in too small a boat) we started going over the seagrass, and all of a sudden there were small glowing shrimps! The shame was we didn’t have any of our collection stuff with us and after talking to the locals they say they have never seen such a thing which suggest a rare even that we were randomly lucky to witness. Whatever, it was really cool!

On a collection note, what is not really call is the amount of gecko tails (they drop of stupidly easily when you try to catch them)/insects(just this morning I got the “alice, look what was eating me in the night, I put it in ethanol”/general dead things the boys seem to be collecting.

I don’t know if it is Fiji male attitude or just nature but the boys are becoming more and more boyish by the day, for example yesterday I when to the toilet only to see a dead Fijian endemic (but common) blue gos hawk  on a cardboard box next to the sink. I didn’t dare look to see what was starting to feast on it. I can safely say I have never had that experience before, nor want to again.

Work wise, the transplantation (I am calling it re-coralation) is mostly done at this site, and so are my coral covers. The fish species list is nearly done so then I can do some abundances and there are some massive porites corals (big round balls a few metres high) which I am going to try and work out the age of, I am thinking at least  few hundred years ole and they grow less than a cm a year!

Also going to go diving soon which will be very exciting and I want to see some big fish! (there aren’t any here which I think Is a combination of it being an enclosed reef and overfishing, just need to work out an experiment to prove it), I think the locals are being a bit selective with the truth about the no fishing area which in one way messing up my work but is interesting in itself!