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As Kipling said (and my profile quotes) we have fed our sea for a thousand years And she calls us, still unfed
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Apr 23, 2024 01:56
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 14:52 |
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Trig Discipline posted:I haven't had a close call with a submarine but the goddamn glass bottom boats full of tourists would come and just hover over us while we were working in Curacao and it pissed us off to no end. For one thing it's a safety issue, but for another thing we don't want tourists seeing us catch fish for research and think it's okay for them to do the same. The methods we use (barrier nets, dip nets, and chemicals while on SCUBA) are straight up illegal for anyone who doesn't have special permission. We're also often negatively buoyant and crawling around on the substrate, so it's not even a good example to set for the tourists for how to dive safely/responsibly. Research diving is loads of fun like that in touristy areas. Even when just getting down to the water - I'm sure there are dozens of tour buses worth of photos of my colleagues and I lumbering down the rocks to shore dives by lighthouses. Extra fun when you're overheating in 7 mm of neoprene and a hood on a hot summer day and some rando family of retirees wants to hear all about what you're doing! Fortunately, in those spots, I'm usually just the helper and I can abandon my buddy to her fate of telling them about her work while I happily splash around and cool off in the shallows. There are occasional benefits to mostly working in places that aren't as, uh, scenic.
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Apr 23, 2024 02:19
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I did all of my training wearing a 7 over 7 farmer john and shorty in northern California, and oh man those minutes of roasting on the shore were just my least favorite thing ever. Once I started actually doing my graduate work in tropical areas I was like "holy gently caress diving can actually be not incredibly difficult and maybe kinda fun actually?" I have done very little cold water diving since.
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Apr 25, 2024 10:08
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Trig Discipline posted:I haven't had a close call with a submarine but the goddamn glass bottom boats full of tourists would come and just hover over us while we were working in Curacao and it pissed us off to no end. For one thing it's a safety issue, but for another thing we don't want tourists seeing us catch fish for research and think it's okay for them to do the same. The methods we use (barrier nets, dip nets, and chemicals while on SCUBA) are straight up illegal for anyone who doesn't have special permission. We're also often negatively buoyant and crawling around on the substrate, so it's not even a good example to set for the tourists for how to dive safely/responsibly. Ugggg, That sounds horrible. I know exactly where you were, the CARMABI research station at Piscadera, next to the Hilton. Right across the channel from the Hilton, there are some shallow reefs that are great for snorkeling. I saw some glass bottoms boats over there, and I did wonder about how shallow it is there... Trig Discipline posted:I have done very little cold water diving since. I like cold water diving, but I can admit that it is a masochistic experience.
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Apr 25, 2024 19:38
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Squashy Nipples posted:Ugggg, That sounds horrible. Type 2 fun for sure.
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Apr 25, 2024 20:20
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Squashy Nipples posted:Ugggg, That sounds horrible. Yes! I have worked at CARMABI off and on for almost twenty years now (jesus christ really?). I've done a ton of work on those reefs right across the channel. They're generally nice but can get a bit nasty sometimes, but if you can get a little boat and head maybe 500m further up along the coast it is absolutely amazing. When we first started working there most of what currently exists wasn't built yet, none of the buildings had air con, and anything you set down anywhere would get stolen within thirty seconds. My first trip there I was working on sperm motility in wrasses, and needed to centrifuge samples to extract sperm. The best I could do given what was available there was to tie a string around an eppendorf tube and whip it around over my head as fast as I could. Then I got the idea to use the ceiling fan in one of the labs as a centrifuge instead, which worked slightly better.
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Apr 26, 2024 00:31
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Trig Discipline posted:My first trip there I was working on sperm motility in wrasses, and needed to centrifuge samples to extract sperm Shakin' dat wrasse
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Apr 26, 2024 07:55
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 14:52 |
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Trig Discipline posted:Yes! I have worked at CARMABI off and on for almost twenty years now (jesus christ really?). I've done a ton of work on those reefs right across the channel. They're generally nice but can get a bit nasty sometimes, but if you can get a little boat and head maybe 500m further up along the coast it is absolutely amazing. I cannot for the life of me fully express how much I enjoy the stupid bullshit improvisation aspect of field research, which is doubly the case for diving work - maybe someone somewhere was silly enough to build a tool for the strange task I am doing, but odds are they didn’t need to do it underwater…
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Apr 26, 2024 13:54
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