first week

this is a banana tree, just outside the main Gump office.

Sorry - I'm having trouble trying to figure out how to put stuff in any certain order! and don't want to spend too much precious time in the tahitian tropics in bloggersville. So, these pics are more than a little disorganized...



this is the Gump station dock, looking out at Cook's bay.




Here's where I've been sleeping! with fan and mosquito net, in the "upstairs" of our bungalow.




Hannah picked us up at the little airport in Moorea in a Gump vehicle - this is Jim and me (with duty-free bag o' booze)


and now for some text to go with this blog....

Hello all! for those of you who don't know, I was able to arrange to come to the Gump Marine Station to help Jim, the Dive Officer for UC Berkeley who oversees diving here. My friend Hannah is also living here this year, working through CRIOBE, the french marine station on Moorea.
So, I got to come to Tahiti, meet up with Jim & visit with Hannah - it's been great!

For this first week, I've been staying with Jim in a bungalow at the marine lab; it's called "manini". In my first 4 days, I've only been diving twice (also inspected a bunch of SCUBA tanks for the station and generally been hanging around, checking out the nearby town), but both of those have been great! I've seen octopus, some giant clams, eels, a white-tipped shark, and - unfortunately - more than a few thorn-of-crowns starfish. Also a couple of big anemones.


looking down at Moorea on the small plane from Papeete.


I also got to help paddle a 6-woman outrigger canoe with Val, the station's secretary, twice! she is practicing for a race in a couple of weeks (sorry, no pics of this either)
On Sunday (my third day here), we couldn't do much of anything outside because there was a crazy storm! big winds and sideways rain, palm trees whipping around - that's just one more thing I don't have pictures of, sorry!