Lizard Island Life

End of my first week on Lizard Island -- it has been a good week in that we have more or less achieved what we wanted to for the first week, which I must keep in mind is far more than can be expected for most fledgling projects of this kind! In celebration we are taking the afternoon off, actually just time out of the water to catch our breaths and sort out various mundanities of island life like laundry and collecting the next fornight's worth of food from today's barge and thinking about some science...

This place really is the most luxurious field station one could possibly want to work on. Perhaps the pinnacle of this luxury is the (solar) hot water showers that are available not just up at the houses that we live in but even round the corner of the dive shed. I think this is the first time I've ever had a hot water dive shed shower in my life, including visits to fairly swanky resorts. (I wonder if the Voyages resort a few beaches down, the only other development on the island, can boast as much.) More totally unexpected amenities include spacious kitchens far better than my own (and a free food supply from research groups who have left!); washing machines; satellite phone and Internet connections at reasonable rates; a well stocked library with all the theses ever written about Lizard as well as other science and fiction; lovely composting toilets; and I could certainly go on. Normally, the privations of tropical coral reef island life (in the past this has included tent living and unsavoury loos 200m from camp) one tries not to mind because of the beauty of the area and the simple fact that you get to dive gorgeous reefs every day; but here we are totally well supplied with creature comforts in addition to experiencing views like the following (this picture taken on the way home after a particularly exhilirating dusk snorkel in which I observed my fish spawning for the first time; fish sex and romantic sunsets complete one's day very satisfactorily):

So yes, it is an extremely nice life. The Research Station is fairly empty at the moment with only one other small group of researchers here other than myself and my field assistant, so I can certainly see how one would go a little stir crazy after a while (as is this time typical of tropical island life, one's world revolves around a very small triangle of house, lab and dive shed; with all other forays outwards always by boat with scuba gear), but I hope to put that off for a while at least. I am too busy now dealing with my visions of my little Centropyge bicolor -- I have started to catch sight of them everywhere out of the corner of my eye, including whilst on dry land walking through a field... hmm.