first dive(s)!!

First divesite of the trip set the bar. Despite not knowing the names of 99% of what I saw today, I did see my first manta ray, a couple white tipped reef sharks, octos, tons of morays and stonefish, and innumerable itsy bitsy creatures.  There was a slight learning curve this morning though, as I didn't think I'd need to adjust my harness at all; turned out I had to cinch it in quite a bit! Kind of a good thing I forgot the camera, I had my hands full already just with getting used to diving warm water. That and I couldn't figure out where the tapping sounds I heard were the guides trying to get my attention.
Since there was only one guest at the resort going diving that day, I got to go with her for the morning dives. We dropped in at a site called Batu Kapal, meaning "rock ship" named because from a distance the rock resembles a ship. There's a wall that bottoms out at about 50', then slopes off  past 100'. Slight current, nothing major. Next dive was at the same site, but just of the point where there's a nice pinnacle that dropped to about 70' then dropped further. Near the end of the dive the current started picking up again. The pinnacle is situated a bit off shore so we had a couple converging currents blowing us around (i thought it was fun).
After returning to the resort and eating some lunch I met with Dimpy the house biologist and she showed me around the house reef. The following are a couple pictures I took. My first underwater batch!

Greetings from Indonesia!

WOOT! I made it! after 2 back to back 8+ hour flights, couple hours milling about in Tokyo, and a couple  more navigating/checking in at Singapore, I arrived in Manado this afternoon at about 1pm. Another 1.5 hour car ride and 10 min boat ride later i landed safely at Lembeh resort. Gotta say, hot damn Singapore is a nice city! at least the airport is pretty plush. Very clean, very organized. Its awesome how they have hotels right inside the airport! although I actually had to clear immigration to get to the hotel. The whole airport/hotel is air conditioned, but the hallways between the elevators and the rooms are open air, so you get a blast of humid air when the doors open. I think Ive got to say, my favorite part was the bathroom.. it had one of those awesome waterfall shower heads. :) Some time in my future travels I'm going to have to come back and visit Singapore.. it'd be fun to take some time and puddle-jump around all these islands.. someday
At any rate, I'm chilling in my room in Indonesia, a little sleepy, but none worse for wear. The people are very cool, all super friendly. Tomorrow I dive right in on the house reef, Dimpy, one of the resident marine biologists will show me around and tell me what kind of stuff we could work on. Already Ive been talking with Kerri about material options for some additional artificial reefs, and the possibility of scouting out some sites up the beach to put in some more reef structures! Dinner is in a few minutes, gonna go grab chow and talk to he guests. Most of them are leaving tomorrow I think I heard, until the next batch arrives.

T-minus 24hr and counting..

Less than 24 hours to go and I've just finished running all my errands. I've been trying to find this place on a map, oddly enough they dont have a location on google maps, so I made one! This is where I will be for the next 6 weeks, maintaining the resort's house reef, scraping of invasive coral species, documenting growth and abundance of other species. I will also get to conduct
my own research project, which will most likely be a continuation of the last couple interns' data collection and species count on the reef.
View lembeh dive resort in a larger map

Thursday morning finds me waking up to green sunshine and the sound of lawn mowers. Only two days before I'm off on my grand Indonesian adventure! I still have quite a few errands to run, clothing to sort, and I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to pack everything into one small bag that's also under 50lbs. I've got to hand it to myself though, even though I'm still scrambling around at the last minute, I'm much more on top of things than I have been for previous adventures. Perhaps it's because this will be the farthest adventure from home, perhaps it's because it will be the longest (to date, anyways). To get there I will take a 10 hour flight from Seattle to Tokyo, layover for 2 hours, then take another 6 hour flight from Tokyo to Singapore. In Singapore I'll spend the night, then catch a final 4 hour flight to Manado the next day. From there it's only a one hour car ride to the resort! hopefully I'll get a chance to catch up on some zzz's before they throw me in the water and make me go to work.