Busy day; artists, live music, ecology, exobiology and Kepler
What a busy day.
Starting with the previous night - Bats. The lecture was very well done and informative, but the real surprise was the two real live bats that Tikyo netted and brought in to show us. Emily held one and Tikyo the other. They were fantastic, and no trouble at all.
The next day – up for yoga at 6 am, followed by full strength sunshine. We tried to find tangigue reef again, found it, but lost it once all the divers were in the water. Very frustrating blue water bounce to 30m trying to find it. We gave up and settled for a nice dive on Manta as a consolation prize.
I got separated from Tikyo, so ended up with a nice quiet solo pootle around – astreopora, echinopora were the corals of the day. Found a nice outcrop of Echinopora Mammiformis, which had some sort of huge barnacle on it, and was engaged in a turf war with a nearby Porites. The Echinopora seemed to be winning. Not seen any Diploastrea Heliopora yet – which is odd.
Came in to find Gerry, Kaila and the rest of the Bacolod crowd had turned up. We caught up while Gringo started his mural.
Gerry gave a talk about the history of Danjugan Island, and Pete followed on with a general 'state of tropical marine conservation' talk.
Survey dive late in the day while the kids made dream catchers under Kaila's expert tutelage. Very shallow, lots of gullies and branching coral. Pocillopora and Acropora dominate as you'd expect. The odd clump of peysonella and halimeda for variety.
Beers when we surfaced!
Colonial ascidians
Then in the evening – my talk – astro camp part 2, 'Are we alone', talking about SETI and the recent discoveries in exobiology/extremophiles – and Kepler's new planets. People took a wide variety variety of things away from it, but fundamentally its simple – we only have one habitable planet and its here. All the others are too far away or dead.
Then live music from the gypsy cafe house band, assisted by Kalayo on drums and Dave Albao on vocals and whisky and setting the world to rights with Gerry and Pete. Probably a bit too much whisky in fact and a very late night.
