18 October

Today is our first day off in Fiji. We are still waiting for the instruments we shipped to get out of customs. During the past couple days, we drove all around Suva to buy hardware and other supplies. We also began to prepare the wooden mounts we will use for the stations' solar panels. Due to the original delay with our trans-Pacific flight and the delay in obtaining the seismometers due to public holidays here in Fiji, it seems as if the start of our (already) tight schedule will be pushed back by three days. Hopefully, we will still be able to install the nine seismometers on the islands within the remaining week and a half.

Despite the unfortunate set-backs, I am very much enjoying my first few days here. One of the highlights so far is 'Diwali' – the Indian festival of lights – on Saturday October 17th. From an outsider's perspective, this holiday has taught me that all people – no matter where they live – love fireworks. As I watched the fireworks being set off all around the city of Suva from the balcony of my hotel, I was reminded of my most recent 4th of July – spent in Great Falls, Montana. The only difference is that here I watched the fireworks explode over palm trees instead of rocks and dirt.

I am also really enjoying the food here in Fiji. I have big plans to eat as much fresh fish as I can before I go home to middle part of the country. For last night's dinner, we ate at the floating restaurant in the harbor. This was a real treat with the tasty selection of fresh fish and the perfect evening breeze coming in off of the water. As an added bonus, we enjoyed our meals while rocking back and forth on the water (just like old times). I tried kokoda, which a type of salad with tomatoes and walu (fish). Even though 'fish' doesn't normally spring to mind when I think 'salad', I will have to make sure that I get to eat kokoda at least once more before I leave Fiji – it was very tasty. Today, we went for a stroll through the garden park and the waterfront near the old Parliament building in Suva. We weren't the only ones taking advantage of the fabulous weather. A number of families, soccer players, pigeons and stray dogs were all hanging out there with us. Hope you enjoy the pictures, more to come later...

Celebrating the Sunsets

Due to popular demand, I've decided to put up a collection of my sunset pictures. About 1 hour before the sun sinks below the horizon, a small group of boat-dwellers and marine mammal personnel gather up on the whale-watching tower and enjoy the cool breeze of early evening. Most days, the sky is filled with puffy white clouds, which reflect beautiful shades of pink and orange as the sun disappears behind the ocean.


On the clear days, we wait in anticipation hoping to catch the flash of green just as the sun sets. I haven't seen the flash yet, although I have seen a faint green halo around the sun as it began to set. A couple of the guys claim that they saw this elusive flash a few days ago; and of course, they then tried to make us all horribly jealous. Although the sunrises I saw were beautiful, I think that I like the sunsets even better. I hope you enjoy the pictures!

The Night Sky

Since the moon isn't full anymore, the rest of the night sky is absolutely brilliant. On a clear night, there are thousands of stars littered across the sky. In the past week, I've seen some of the most amazing night skies of my life.

Since I switched from the night shift to the day shift, I was able to see the planet of Venus sinking to the west, an hour or so after sunset (~8-9 pm). Venus is only ever visible in the night sky just after sunset or just before sunrise, because it's closer to the sun than the Earth is. Unfortunately, the only time I was able to get a picture of it with my camera was shortly after sunset; compared to the sun, it is quite dim. This picture is from February 21st, and Venus is the dot in the top right of the picture (you have to look very hard to see it).

At first, the southern sky was so foreign to me that I didn't recognize any of the stars except those in the constellations of Orion and Canis Major - which can also be seen in the northern sky. But after some help from the guys on the bridge (and a neat navigation program on their computer), I've finally seen the Southern Cross that everyone mentions. Some other familiar favorites are the Pleiades, and the Big Dipper. I didn't even think that I would be able to see the Big Dipper in the southern hemisphere, but early in the morning, part of it is visible just above the northern horizon.

It really isn't easy to pick out constellations, because there are thousands of stars in the sky. After a while, I became content to just lay on the picnic table on the deck or on the ropes in front of the bridge and watch the stars sway back and forth with the rocking boat. With a cool breeze and the sound of the waves crashing against the bow, it's quite possibly the best way to end the day.

Perfect Sunrises

One of the best parts about working from midnight to noon is that I have many chances to catch the sunrise. I think I have watched more sunrises in the past 3 weeks than I've seen in my entire life. And, as long as the sky isn't completely overcast, every sunrise is absolutely perfect. My favorite place to watch them is on the small piece of deck in front of the bridge, just behind the bow. A bunch of large, coiled ropes provide a pretty comfy seat, and the cool, humid breeze coming up over the bow is the best. If I wasn't so eager to watch the sun come up, I probably could take a pretty nice nap there.
I hope you enjoy these - I certainly did!

Arc Welding

I learned arc-welding from some of the guys on the boat (Bern and Brian)! They made me wear a really nasty leather coat, huge leather gloves, and of course the large welding mask. Despite all of this protective gear, a spark still burned a perfectly round hole in my shoe, which I discovered the next day. As a souvenir, I welded my name onto a steel plate. In order to make it actually look good (ha!), Brian rounded the edges of the plate and then polished it up really nicely. I now have a 2 pound steel plate that I need to fit into my max 50 lb. baggage somehow on the way home!
I really enjoyed learning how to weld, and I wish there was more scraps of steel around that I could ruin!

Cyclone "Hettie"

We are in the southern hemisphere, so we are in the middle of their tropical storm season. As I mentioned, we managed to finish deploying the seismometers just as the waters were starting to get choppy. I was pretty alarmed when there was a cyclone warning issued for all the Tongan Islands and Fiji - this being my first ever tropical storm ever. Luckily the storm wasn't large, and it didn't actually reach cyclone status until well to the south of us. Besides the rocking of the boat and the fact that we couldn't start the air-guns until the seas became calmer, the whole ordeal wasn't bad at all; in fact, it was sort of fun.

While out on deck earlier with the OBSs, I was able to experience waves crashing over the side of the boat and drenching us; that was fun and exciting. Also, I've never had the experience of feeling like I was going to get tossed out of bed. It's like having a dream about falling, except when you wake up, you realize that the bed actually is falling out from beneath you. The bouncing up and down of the boat felt a lot like a trampoline, and it was my favorite part of the weather. My second favorite part was the crazy rolling of the boat (tipping from side to side). I suppose it really isn't cool for all the belongings on your desk to get thrown onto the floor; but for me, it was pretty exciting. In close third was the weird combination of pitch and roll, which suddenly gives the spinning-room sensation - so far, this brought me the closest to losing my lunch. Unfortunately, the seas became choppy before we were entirely used to being on a boat in the first place, so most people had difficulty sleeping and some became sick. Now that it's all over, and we're no longer sleep-deprived and crabby, I'm going to go ahead and say that the whole ordeal was pretty cool.

Ocean-Bottom Seismometers

One of the best parts of my time on the boat (so far) was deploying the 59 ocean-bottom seismometers (OBSs). These instruments measure vibrations in the Earth, which are created by "air-guns" towed behind the boat. The bursts from the guns shake the crust beneath the water and the vibration moves outwards through the crust in all directions to the array of seismometers. The signals recorded by our seismometers can show hotter regions, where seismic waves travel slower, and colder regions, where the waves move faster. For this reason, our work out here in the back-arc basin is meant to "see" any hot regions beneath the surface, as we would expect to see in an active back-arc basin.


In order to get all of this data, we first had to send all of these seismometers (OBSs) to the seafloor. Each OBS has a sensor (the actual seismometer part), a data recorder (which records the data as a digital signal), a heavy weight, and empty glass spheres surrounded by yellow plastic. When the instrument is deployed, the weight drags it down to the seafloor. Then when the experiment is over, a signal is sent to the OBS, telling it to release the weight. After that, the OBS rises back to the surface, where we collect it. The OBSs were built mostly ahead of time, so as we cruised over the sites for the instruments, we were able to carefully drop it into the water and continue onward. We finished this stage in about 2-3 days - fortunately before Cyclone "Hettie" came our way!