Fishy trials and tribulations

Have fairly rapidly discovered that one of the difficulties of being on field season is that you think about your fish literally all day every day, and often dream about them in the night or wake up at 5am finding yourself trying to plan the next day's research activities. Hence today we are taking an Entire Day Off, what a luxury, not really one which I feel I totally deserve but I think it will prove good for my sanity, I not only see bicolor angels everywhere now but they are always buzzing around the back (and often the forefront) of my mind in their exasperating cute little fishy way. The Entire Day Off consists really of just staying on dry land and allowing all these little cuts and scratches (I am a walking feast for the mozzies here and I am very bad at not scratching, so I have many!) to dry out a little, and letting me catch up a little with land-type work; so in reality I am not totally avoiding the bicolor-related thoughts, but I do intend to spend some of the afternoon mooching in a way that totally belies the fact that every hour I spend at the research station is very Expensive and Valuable Fieldwork Time that should never be wasted on pain of producing a crap PhD. I also woke up at 9am today, the luxury (we normally wake around 7 and are at the dive shed to leave for morning dives/snorkels at 8:30). We may climb Cook's Look which is the highest point on the island (a reasonable height I think, it takes about 3-4 hours round trip) later in the afternoon if the weather holds.

The past week has been a bit of a rollercoaster, things looking totally grim and prompting thoughts of quitting and becoming an investment banker one day, then bright and sunny with research for life beckoning the next day, and then the cycle repeats. The main issue has been study sites, which I had thought I had settled on by the end of my first week (according to plan) but which then proved to be a problem in terms of diving regulations, as I need to dive at dusk at my sites to watch my fish spawn, and a couple of the sites were too far away for the station's directors to be happy for us to do that without a third person to sit in the boat as an extra safety precaution. So halfway through my second week I found myself starting the search for study sites all over again. Having thought I'd found a wonderful one closer to the station, I then discovered that once the south-east tradewinds start blowing (which happens any day NOW) that site would be too exposed and rough to dive. And so on and so on -- if it wasn't one obstacle it was another putting a big black cross against site after site. Finally I think I may be back on track (though I am now very wary of being overly optimistic and am totally mentally prepared for it to all collapse tomorrow) as I've found yet another site, still exposed to the tradewinds but marginally more sheltered, and the station directors have very very kindly allowed us to dusk dive at one of my further away sites. Phew. You didn't need to know that, but it makes me feel better to have complained about it all one more time!

In happier thoughts, next week I am going to try to catch some fish (to measure and tag them, and also to squeeze their bellies to see what if anything comes out...!) which sounds like most frustrating fun, everybody has warned me how much of a total nightmare it can be, so we will see. Er, maybe that's not a happy thought after all. Anyway I am glad to be starting on something new instead of searching for yet more study sites -- in plan anyway.

Home sweet home:



Wet season means I've been taken out of or not been able to get into the water countless times due to the weather, but when it's nice, this is the view from the dive shed of our beach and weekly BBQ area:




Looking the other way down the beach towards Palfrey and South Islands at low tide:

Research station boats -- mine is No. VII with a 25hp motor in the front and behind it is Kirsty K, used for longer trips to reefs outside of the Lizard Island Group.