November Update

Hi all! 

Its been a while since I last posted. It has been a busy month or so on the island, Scott has started his masters and I have been doing lots of field work for my job, and our cat Dusty had kittens! (We have found homes for most of them by now)

For work we began doing dive surveys at the end of October into the beginning of November. This was done in order to collect data on the marine species within the different habitats around the island. This was really fun because we went scuba diving almost every day for two weeks, recording and counting the fish and other marine animals within certain locations. We had a 50m tape measure which was placed on the seafloor, and we each took a side of the tape measure and we swam along and counted all the smaller animals such as urchins and sea stars going one way, and counting fish on the way back.  

More recently we have started (and just finished) another project where we use baited remote underwater cameras (BRUVS) to film around the island and see what animals will come to the cameras. This is done to survey and determine which species are present in a certain area, while also estimating relative abundance. All the footage we collect is then sent to Australia where a larger data base is kept.

During our surveys so far we have seen three small hammerhead sharks, tuna, wahoo (barracuda), and lots of blue water with hopefully more species soon! 

Some more exciting news, the first sightings of whale sharks have been happening around the island, which is a sign of summer coming soon!