Tuesday, 27 June 2017

Day 2- First Turtle Sighting

Slept much better than I thought I would, was on a bunk bed that was made by one of the team leaders Nick. I woke up a couple of times due to cockrals calling. Was up at 8:30 for cleaning jobs, my responsibility  was to clean the toilet. After that I had some breakfast; toast and jam. We then got ready to go out on survey, we headed down to the beach and got the Kayaks. They were two person kayaks, we put our snorkels, water bottles etc into the kayaks and then carried them into the water. We went through a bit of water confidence with the new volunteer making sure she could swim and use a life jacket before setting off. We then set off I was at the back in charge of steering and paddling. Our destination was on the other island a small bay where turtles are often spotted. As we approached the bay we could see a lot of tourist boats. According to Maisy this was the busiest she had seen if all season. 10 boats were counted in total with each boat having at least 6 people on. We were later going out than planned so instead of doing the normal transect searching we used the tourists as a guide to where the turtles were. Due to the depth and the last time I free dived I was unable to get that close. We moved around to different depths, keeping two people in the water, two in each boat looking out for the snorkelers. Later on I spotted a Juvenile I got a quick shot of it that's on the photo and video section. Plan to get better ones as my free diving improves. We headed back for around 12 o'clock, as the intern I have taken over from was leaving and Maisy wanted to say goodbye. We paddled back to our island and put the kayaks away. When we got to the house I sprayed off all the equipment we used and then went for a shower as I was very salty. After that we went down to the Jetty for lunch but it was very busy and only a few of the cafes were open. So we walked a bit further through the village and found an open stall. I had tuna cheese and lettuce sandwiches with chips and an orange juice. Food here is very limited mainly rice dishes and things with chips but it still tastes good and it's cheap. After lunch we went through the data analysis and how to identify individuals from our survey this morning.  We only spotted 4 and 1 of them was the same turtle but that was due to limited time and the sheer numbers of people. I was also taught how to show volunteers how to do their part in the data collection. After that me, Dan and a volunteer took a walk to Pitani Beach. This is a little beach that Aluna resort is situated on. I dumped my stuff on one of the tables and went for a swim. The walk out to deep water is a long one and there is a lot of rough footing before it is deep enough to swim. I should have brought my water shoes, anyway the water is lush and had a good swim. When I got back to land we headed up to the Aluna resort bar for a drink, only 2 days in and already found a beer. We sat on the balcony overlooking the bay, it is so beautiful here. Once we had our beer we went down to the lower decking to sun bathe. We were there for a good hour or so, then we realised our volunteer was on dinner duty so we headed back. Dinner was already done thanks to Mellisa one of the other inter,  we had noodles, pees and mushrooms. I added some soy sauce to add more flavour. After dinner everyone was knackered so we chilled and then went to bed. Got two new volunteers coming tomorrow and I'm in charge of making sure they are water confident and showing them around.

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