TJ/Tarpon Feeding

OK, so I'd heard about a place call the "Hungry Tarpon" where you can get fish and eggs for breakfast. Supposedly the place is famous. Anyway, the food was superb, but there's also a dock where you can go and hand feed 75 - 120 pound tarpon. As I'm writing this, my knuckles are still bleeding from the first one I fed! Way cool! I know it sounds tourist-like, but it was really fun and I am doing this again.

Peter's New Friend

We've really enjoyed our time here in the Keys. We've seen a lot of cool things, had a lot of great experiences, and met a lot of cool people. Today was no exception. It started out like many others we've had - up early and leaving the canal for a long day of octopus tagging/releasing and such. We got to our site and a very nasty algal bloom made the vis terrible at best. Peter, wanting to lead by example, suggested that we simply make the best of it and see what may come. I quickly decided to shrug off the bad vis and make haste at what this wonderful day had in store. We got our gear together, jumped in the water, and set off for the day's new adventure. Now, anyone who knows Pete very well knows of his innate ability to make new friends wherever he goes, some human - some not (eg. dolphins, sea turtles, cormorants, etc.). While wandering around aimlessly trying to find octopus dens in the pea soup, I noticed Peter near my position. Underneath him was a new friend of the day, a remora. This was a good friend. Despite the accidental flogging and kicking Pete gave it, the remora turned the other cheek (or rather the other operculum). Pete had yet again made a new friend. This new friend found a strange connection with Pete and chose to stick around for the entire trip. Pete really seemed to enjoy the company. Man, that guy really has a knack!

Catching the Kraken

18 July, Two Thousand and Seven:
As we cast off today and left the harbor, I felt a sense of foreboding, as if some evil were awaiting us. Of course, our goal today was to capture the legendary creature of yore, the mythical Kraken. TJ claims to have spotted it earlier in the summer, lying await in a crevice, its cold, evil eyes glowing in the darkness. And so we returned to the waters of Mount Trashmore 1, seeking the vile beast in its lair. As we rounded the cape of Long Key and headed West, into an uncertain future, I set my brow and squinted into the noonday sun, haunted by my thoughts of what lay ahead of us. I looked over at TJ and saw that he was similarly preoccupied. Would we live to see the sun go down this day?
Some hours later, after an epic battle of several minutes, I succeeded at last in chasing the Kraken from its lair with my tickle stick. As it fled my stick I managed somehow to gather its massive bulk in my net and lift it from the water. I had captured the Kraken. I swam the vile beast over to TJ to show him. Upon spotting this massive octopus, TJ's eyes went wide and he nearly soiled himself. We took the beast, now restrained, back to the Argus for tagging. Although I regretted taking the evil creature onto the Argus for any time period, lest its evil anoint the timbers of the ship, causing years of bad luck, sterility for our goats, and hives.
Quickly we tagged the beast and released it back to its lair to live another day, attacking ships, crabs, and lobsters. T'was a good day to be alive - we conquered the beast, lived to see another day, and had cookies awaiting us back on the ship. A good day indeed!

Mocking Us

Now that we have finished with the crab tethering experiment, fiddler crabs have now appeared in droves on our porch. We looked in the mangroves via kayak, we ordered crabs via FedEx, we crawled around in the mud at Anne's Beach catching crabs. Blood, sweat, and tears for crabs. Then they show up on the porch in such numbers that we are now stepping on them accidentally. Not that I am bitter.

Another view

Despite the embellishments of the editor, I will admit, I did learn an important lesson...I found out that diving au naturale is actually very comfortable! (picture not posted).

A Painful, Burning Sensation

Above: Happy, heroic-looking, protected marine scientists

TJ has had better days in the field than this one (a bit of an understatement to say the least). All of us learn one day or another why we wear our protective outer skins. Yes, despite commentary to the contrary, we don't all just want to feel like Superman (sans cape for hydrodynamic benefit, Superman would be slow underwater with a cape, or "shark bait" as we in the business like to say). No, we wear our sexy, protective skin suits for their anti-sting benefits for the marine biologist's delicate skin. If we don't wear them, we take a chance of a random jellyfish shot to the groin. Some of us are willing to take that chance (the tough guys/girls), others are not (the pragmatists or wimps, if you will) and a few of us (TJ) are new enough not to truly understand the risks (the new guys). TJ has now moved, rather painfully, into the pragmatists group. Welcome to the group. Strangely, he has yet to thank me for my part in this vital segment of his Keys education. . .

Above: Public Enemy #1

After deploying the CRAB-ER-ATE-OR 4000's (crab tethers, see earlier post) at Mount Trashmore (bayside of Long Key), TJ, unclad with dive skin, let out a bellow and jumped up onto the boat with a great deal of urgency, vaulting past me on the dive ladder. You see, it is much easier to check the tethers if you don't have to go through the trouble of donning your lycra dive skin (complete with heroic theme music). You do run the risk of kicking up an upside down jellyfish though, such as while waiting for the dive ladder to clear next to the boat. The upside down jellys are somewhat unique in the Keys by their tendency to release the stinging cells into the water without much provocation, stinging you by proxy, without even touching them. These stinging cells can also migrate into rather unfortunate places, such as up your swimming suit. For some reason, TJ didn't seem to appreciate my recitation of this particular marine biology lesson, proceeding to tear off his shorts and hop around naked like a hyperactive crab, complaining about a painful, burning sensation on his inner thighs.Above: Pete explains the wonders of the upside down jellyfish to TJ.

Needless to say, this was a very trying situation for me. I have been on the boat with rapidly disrobing scientists before, and let me assure you, it is not a pretty sight. You will happy to know that I survived this incident with little physical or psychological damage. TJ also assures me that all his vital parts survived the Jellyfish attack. I will take his word for it.

What we've been up to (now with pictures).

Ok, so to catch everyone up on what we've been doing.... We have been tethering crabs in the craberators, catching and tagging octopus, and went with Cyndy, Kim, Jen, Fernando, Dusty, and the ODU crew to watch fireworks at Sombrero beach. Really good fireworks! The water yesterday was 91 degrees! That's a little too warm, even for someone as cold-natured as me.
We've also had an algal bloom or something that has caused some poor vis on some of our sites (only about 3 feet). This has poured some icy cold water on our red-hot experiments. No worries, we trudged right on through. We also had a pump go out on one of our cattle tanks (used for our night experiments). We improvised here as well - the Childress' lab always prevails! We've also found out that catching our own fiddler crabs has been highly productive, although messy and disgusting (see tethered crab below).Oh the trouble and suffering we will go through for the cause, not to mention all the money we are saving our lab (just a little plug in case Michael is reading this). The high points....Pete talking to fiddler crabs, the fireworks show with good friends, and Florida sunshine! I still may never make it back to good ol' South Carolina.

Octopus Hatching

Here is the video of the octopus hatching. Not real clear on YouTube, but you get the idea. This was within the top 5 coolest things I have ever seen underwater. Enjoy!

The Octopus Whisperer

So just to update you all on some of the way cool stuff I've been doing. Seems like things are falling right into place. Today we went tagging/releasing octopus at one of our sites.
We found one female with her clutch of egg sacks in the den. As we attempted to capture her, I noticed a peculiar object out of the corner of my eye. One of the eggs had just hatched! In fact, we found that upon agitation - all the eggs began hatching! We even caught some on video, which we plan to put on YouTube (we'll post the link). I've even got one video of an egg hatching into a baby octopus, who then chose to reside on my hand for a few minutes. Then Peter and I, as all good octopus mothers do, protected our brood from ensuing fish predators until they were in the safe confines of their original den. What a job!!! To think....they actually pay me for this.

The Full Moon Party.....What a blast! I had always heard these things were fun, but I really had no idea. There were fire dancers, a reggae band, a parade, guys walking around on stilts - the whole shebang. I'm also pretty sure I caught a glimpse of "Dancing Pete". I cannot be absolutely certain, for it's sort of like seeing Elvis, Bigfoot, or even a UFO. Nobody believes you when you tell them. Oh well, call me crazy. And the rum drinks, whatever they're called, with the glow sticks in them. It was sort of like being at a rave (Pete's parents translation: party with glow sticks), but with RUM!!!! Anybody that gets down here should definitely go to one of those. We polished up the night with a quick stop at the Safari Lounge (aka-Dead Animal Bar). If you've never been there, they have a sort of ring toss game that all the people play. While I feel that this novice was as good as anyone that tried, Pete excelled at this game like no other. With one eyebrow raised, he entered an almost zen-like state. I've never seen anything quite like it. The guy was money...every time. Good times...good times. Now I'm looking forward to Sombrero Beach and 4th of July fireworks. To be continued.....