Day 10

Noon Position 30°46'22.26"N, 158°51'4.26"W

Blog 10 Wednesday 9/16/09
Last night, we sent a picture of stuff Captain Moore pulled out of the ocean while riding around on the dinghy. The fish he caught in the picture were actually inside the plastic pollution while others were living on it. Here is what you can see in the picture (even though there were many more):

2 trigger fish
2 Hawaiian sergeants
2 different crabs
2 fire worms (polychaetes)
2 Goose neck barnacles (that you can see)
Pretty impressive catch I’d say!

Yesterday’s blog hinted toward a lull in action as we waited to hear if our guests were coming. It looks like it’s a go so here it is. We have a production company flying out to this location via a Billabong seaplane. We don’t know who the cast members are yet, but we do know some main players are Captain Moore and some plastic pollution. Mike Prickett is producing the film. They’ll be snorkeling and interviewing and we’ll all be talking trash as we run PowerPoints and share the mission of AMRF. We’re pretty stoked!

Even though ORV Alguita hasn’t done much but go around in circles for 48 plus hours, we are getting quite the well-rounded perspective on sea animal and human transportation. This morning on my watch, we had not one but two more ships pass by. One was only 3.5 miles away which is something like a near miss. No worries, the captain watched over things to insure we didn’t have some unexpected visitors. Three ships in less than 12 hours - pretty exciting considering we haven’t seen any marine vessels in eight days!

Speaking of marine vessels, here’s a fish with its own (see photo above.) Bill took me out on the dinghy so I could practice videotaping dinghy style for tomorrows big seaplane landing when we noticed a large plastic dish-looking object about 18” around. We drove over to it and found not only a trigger fish lying on its side in the dish, but also a Hawaiian sergeant. We aren’t sure if the fish were sunning or stuck. Compliments of ocean plastic, we aren’t the only ones with flotation devices.

We stopped seeing the red-footed boobies. They only travel so far North and for the past five nights we haven’t seen a hide nor feather of them. But interestingly enough, we have started to see black-footed albatross (photo above.) They are a magnificent bird that can fly a 1000 miles foraging for food and if the wind conditions are right, they only need to flap their wings a few times. Their nine foot wing span and unique wing design may have a lot to do with it. Check out this black-footed albatross as it gets a running start while launching itself through the air. Seaplanes and albatross - what fantastic opportunities we are getting to witness out here over 550 miles from land.

They aren’t the only things that can fly. Check out Lindsey getting ready to launch off of the mainsail beam to plunge 9 meters down and me showing her how its done. Good times.
More later.
Bonnie