22nd May 2012

Sorry it's been a few days from our last post.

Lets see, what's happened?!   Well after our Junkyard assessment dive, a crew of us went out the following afternoon to move the cement blocks which were the final items to be moved back 100 or so meters just south east of the original buoy line.   Whilst Si took all the strong lads with him, I took Sarah, my Underwater Naturalist student for a tour of Junkyard and then we went over to the coral nursaries and gave them a clean.  When I say clean, I mean removing all of the ascidians growing on the base of the corals. As in time they'll grow up and suffocate the coral.  It's a long job and think after a couple of 76 minute dives, we'd done an excellent job and the rest of the team had successfully moved all the blocks and for the moment, just laid them on the anchor.  We'll have to arrange another couple of dives in order to put the sand screws in and secure everything down.

It's been pretty quiet at Crystal, so not much teaching.  Simons always busy though, working on UK stuff amoungst other things.  We did take a student out on a Ecological Monitoring Program  (EMP) transect line.  Basically going over a 100meter line, 5x5mtrs and recording, fish, invertebrate and what substrate, type and health it's in with Emma, a Divemaster form Master Divers who's training to be an instructor for the 'EMP'  ..she seemed very competent and passionate which was refreshing.

We played RISK the other night, world domination, which went on for hours and in the end around 1.30am we decided to call it a night as Simon went out early in the game and the 3 of us that were left would have been there for days :-D

Yesterday  we pottered around in the morning and then went to the pool and played ball for a few hours. Early evening we headed home, made roast potatoes, sweetcorn which was going to go with a veggie stuffing mix but on opening it, it smelt a bit odd. Only 3 months out of date:-D

A movie and a few glasses of wine later, we retired.

x

Jenny


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