17th September 2016

After a lovely Birthday it's back to normal.  On Friday I had a bit of a lie in, I arranged to meet my eco intern at 11:45am ready for the afternoon boat where we were going out to collect Crown of Thorns.  Crown of Thorns are giant star fish with up to 23 legs and can grow to nearly a meter.  They eat the algae living within coral.  In abundance the Crown of Thorns can do a lot of damage. destroying large area's of reef, as numbers have risen around the island, we go out and collect them on a regular basis.  Each individual, depending on it's size can produce millions of eggs/larvae.  The larvae feeds on phytoplankton and due to the rise in nutrients in the water due to pollution, run off etc they is no end of food for them and due to overfishing, a lot of the young don't get eaten  ..so with that inbalance, it can have serious repercussions.  Anyway, we collected 6 in total  ..not a lot but it's a good thing that we didn't see that many.

This weekend I've tried to stay away from the office.  I did pop in for a couple of hours to catch up with posting some photo's and catching up on mails but I've stayed away.   You would think this is pretty hard but as this is the only place that I see Simon, it's tempting to stay there all day and everyday.  I do feel guilty though when Simon asks me what I'm doing today.  Especially when I say, Oh, maybe go for a swim, cycle massage ..just have a ME day!!

Oh, I had a bit of a clear up last night after I did some food shopping, had my hair trimmed and finished in the office.   It was like being back at 'Fermoy' (old home)  clearing the woods and making bonfires.  The entrance is looking so much neater :-D  Here are a few pictures ..I should have taken before ones but you'll just have to use your imagination and think  10000 of leaves everywhere. 

remains of the bonfire

Path to house free of leaves

One of our plants :-D