Good News Tuesday

Hello All,

It's been a while since I have had the opportunity to post as it has been Mark having all the adventures. Since Mark leaving in April, I have been teaching, coaching and tutoring. I spent the summer and fall visiting friends in Wolfville, Ottawa, family in Cape Breton and friends in Saint John. I also took a week to coach at our provincial synchronized swimming camp, and a week to laze around in the sun on the traditional “Wilcox Ocean Park Week”.

When Mark had left, I was still unable to apply for my work visa due to my recent health issues. We were instructed by my physician to wait until late August to ensure that I was healthy before applying for my own work visa. Everything came back with good health, and the first Friday in September I sent off my application to Washington to be processed at their North American Embassy. The visa itself was a while to be approved as it had to be sent on from Washington to New Zealand for additional screening and potential approval.

The good news is that the work visa was approved!!

 

I have since booked a flight to New Zealand, leaving 30 days from today, on December 12^th and I will be arriving in Auckland on the 15^th of December - just in time for the Holidays! I am very lucky to have much better flights/connections than what Mark had on his flight. To start with, my flight leaves Saint John at lunch time rather than 5:30 in the morning and each of my layovers are no longer than 2 hours (where Mark had a 12 hour lay over on the west coast).

The next 30 days are going to be a whirlwind! I am going to continue teaching until the end of November, and I will be coaching until I leave for NZ. I have started my “to-do” lists, and I have even crossed off a lot of items in the last week. I am currently looking for employment in NZ and am hoping to get into a few school relief teaching (supply teaching) once I arrive.

Mark and I can not even begin to express how excited we are about my arrival in Auckland, nor can we express enough gratitude for all of our friends and family that have made a very difficult 18 months a whole lot easier with love and laughter along the way.

A week in review; site selection, cooking, and Halloween

Greetings again. It has been a bit of a slower week with the holiday Monday so I had a lot of time on my hands last weekend. It has been quite a while since I just went exploring so I hopped in the car and took a tour to Wellsford, Kaipara Harbour on the west coast, and then back through Warkworth for some Groceries. There was not much to stop and do along this particular route, one walking trail that I will try out next sunny day I have off, but otherwise it was just a nice weekend drive. The road to Wellsford is a winding roller coaster ride through beautiful forested areas with large conifers and silver ferns.

Wellsford was essentially some houses and shops along a stretch of road, but the area around it was what makes this area so special. Numerous rolling green hills, broken occasionally by a clump of trees. Sheep and other cattle dotted the landscape everywhere.

As I approached the west coast, I was treated to a single lookout, these continuous rolling hills that eventually dipped down into the enormous harbour that is the Kaipara. I am working on stitching the pictures together to get a nice Panoramic shot!

The rest was low lying fields with small shoulders that didn't really allow for stopping and taking pictures. There were also a large number of motorcycles around, enjoying what I suspect to be an otherwise quiet road in the nice weather. As I turned back to Warkworth, the road remained very narrow, but headed back into forest. After some much needed groceries I wandered back to campus to get some cooking done, which turned out to be very fortunate since a field course showed up Tuesday, ultimately taking over much of the kitchen. For those of you that worry about me eating well, I wouldn't. I made a weeks long feast of butter chicken (not pictured), a spicy curry, Singapore noodles with honey garlic chicken, and a big stack of naan bread for the curry and dinner at Jan's (where we enjoyed some very nerdy discussion about Star Trek).

The majority of the rest of the week has consisted of planning my small scale experiment and getting equipment ready for the large scale experiment off of Rotoroa Island. Wednesday I did manage to get out to Jones Bay to look for my next site, and I may have found a nice shallow embayment to set up a few experimental beds. It is not a sandy beach for lounging in the sun, but I can think of worse places to work, and I mean that with a large dose of sarcasm.

Thursday was Halloween, which is a poorly celebrated even here in New Zealand. Mind you, it isn't what it used to be when I was young in Canada either. Either way, we had a "Halloween" themed poker night last night. So I quickly slapped together a cake and decorated it accordingly. I donned my star trek uniform in a minimum effort to dress up, and headed out to lose 2 dollars and have some social interaction. It was a fun night including Leo's pumpkin (squash) that he carved. The effort was really nice and hopefully he can experience a fall Halloween instead of a spring one so that he can carve a real pumpkin. I brought my own Jack-O-Lantern.

And to finish off the week, I went today with Jan and Ben to Pakiri to get some mussels. Didn't need any myself, just went along for the walk. It was nice to get my feet wet and enjoy the feel of soft sand under my feet. Hopefully the weather will get better for this weekend so that I can enjoy another venture out!

Exploring the Last Frontier

Salutations again! It has been a while and I have been busy working on presentations and proposals for my project. However, I spent the better part of today out of the office, enjoying the sun and surf as I headed out to identify my primary study site. This is where I will be actively setting up my mussel beds for re-establishment.

We climbed aboard the Hawere early this morning and headed on our two and half hour course down to Rotoroa Island. The Hawere is a stupendous craft, specifically built for research and diving. Sitting in the cabin looking out at the sea passing by us, the sun gleaming off the rail, and dolphins bow-riding, had me fading back to memories of my favorite show as a child; The Last Frontier. Catching myself humming the tune for the opening theme, I thought back to that show that helped to nurture my love of the ocean; of Canadian underwater cinematographer John Stoneman and his adventures in the many oceans of the world.

The Hauraki Gulf was filled with gannets and petrels flying about and diving into the water after fish. We even caught the tail of a Bryde's whale. Off in the distance we also caught sight of a tall ship, the Lord Nelson, sailing slowly along.

There were many beautiful islands along the way, with stone cliffs, rolling green fields and a few trees. We passed such originally named places as gannet rock, a "snow" covered isle where these birds roost.

We met Shane, my other supervisor, at the site and dove on the first embayment which unfortunately was so murky and silty, I could put most of my arm into the mud with little effort. So up we went and off to the next embayment that we had scouted out. This was a much nicer spot, still quite muddy, but decently clear. The bottom had sparse tunicates and heart urchins but not a whole lot else. A perfect place to put a couple tons of mussels!

The water was beautiful and we took a bit of an opportunity to look around, even so much as out of the area where we planned to do the study. I was diving in a wet suit with no gloves or hood it was that warm! Probably wouldn't do so on a long dive, but it felt good.

I also got to see some really awesome anemones. These guys were attached to some hard substrate in among the mud. Such a robust body and delicate looking tentacles, I could have spent half an hour looking at these guys, but it was getting late and we had to make a decision on where to set up the beds.

We came to a consensus on this site, and after sending Shane on his way, we said goodbye to Rotoroa Island and headed back to Ti Point.

Much to our surprise, when we returned up through Kawau Island, the inner Kawau Bay was filled with tall ships and smaller sailing vessels alike. Beautiful rigging and sheets, the multiple masts and lengths of rope; a touch of history that draws you back to the days when the seas were filled with wooden sailing ships. I stopped to wonder what it would be like trying to do research off of a sailing ship as a naturalist in the times of Charles Darwin. As exhilarating as that seamed, I though of how easy today's work went and how hard it would have been to do that on one of those sailing vessels. I think I will stick with the modern vessel. But there is a certain romanticism of the past that these ships conjure up in a person, of a simpler time, navigating by charts and stars, landmarks and old lighthouses with stoic keepers lighting a safe path for mariners. I also found myself missing lighthouses as I only saw a single one on the whole trip to and from my site. But there were a grand total of 5 tall ships in the bay and numerous smaller sailing vessels, treating us with a good view as they past by us.

It was really nice to get out of the office, out of the bunk room, and out of Leigh; not to fight with traffic, or computer issues, or sit glaring at a computer screen. I am saving that for tomorrow. All in all, it was a wonderful day exploring this, the last frontier!

Let the fun begin!

Today I begin some fieldwork, finally! It was a positively beautiful day today, very little wind and lots of sun; perfect for a morning on the water. We were off to test out some cages that Peter and I had built to put some mussels in. I also got to test out my new wet-suit in the open water and as nice as it is to remain dry, it was nice for a quick in and out of the water as it was a bit lest cumbersome. Here are the fruits of my labour.

Then I went to pick up Rosie (The car) who was in for her inspection, known as a warrant of fitness. Not a high point to fork out for the work, but at least the car is legal for a half a year. To make sure I end the day on a high note I decided to go out for a paddle in the reserve. I still have some gear issues I need to work out for snorkeling (especially the weight), but I got to float along the surface and get a look at the life in the channel between the island and the mainland. I have not yet identified everything, but I did have some very inquisitive snapper following me around. One of which was a good foot and a half tall and probably three feet long (pictured on the bottom)!

Tomorrow is another day. No fieldwork planned, probably just getting some cooking done and doing some writing, but it was a great time and a wonderful feeling to finally get my fieldwork started. Until next time, take care!

A Concrete Topic

Hello everyone. It has been a busy couple weeks with meetings sending me back and forth from Auckland, phone calls and emails to various members involved in my project, and countless hours milling over the design for my project. Suffice it to say, I am now dug in deep to my project and I would like to share a little with you; to explain what I will be doing for the next 2 and a half years that I have remaining on this side of the world.

It may come as a shock to some, but I am not working with crabs, nor crustaceans, but still working with marine invertebrates. My species of study this time will be the green-lipped mussel (Perna canaliculus for you scientists out there), and endemic species in New Zealand that is of great economic importance. This species supports are large aquaculture industry, but despite this, its abundance in the Hauraki Gulf around Auckland is incredibly sparse. Back in the early 1900 to 1970's there was a dredge fishery for this species which forms extensive beds, and as time progressed, the harvests grew until their crash when dredging became unprofitable. To this day, remnant beds of these mussels are virtually absent from the area, with only a few very small spots. This has removed such benefits as water filtration and forming a habitat that other animals use.

A group of scientists, environmentalist, and members of industry have come together to attempt to restore this lost habitat back to the Hauraki Gulf. They have enlisted my help to design experiments that would produce proper protocols to establish new mussel bed habitat. So for the last few weeks, we have been arranging the purchase of large quantities of mussels, ropes and mussel socks, and building cages to help test the sustainability of the beds. In just a little over a month we will be embarking on an effort to put those mussels back on the ocean floor and monitor the sustainability and colonization of the beds by other animals. In a nut shell, I am determining the best way to "re-forest" the bottom of the ocean. So this is what I have been up too while the rest of you are leaving summer for fall, enjoying your 91st birthday (Nan), and gearing up for Thanksgiving. Miss you all.

Auckland Night Market

Today I experienced the Auckland Night market, an eclectic groupings of food vendors from all many parts of the world. This intriguing gathering occurs every Sunday night, in the basement level of a mall car park of all places. The whole area is cornered off and people arrive, setting up their tents and hotplates, barbecues and tables, offering a little slice of someone's home for all to try.

It was a stupendous experience, and a bit overwhelming, with so many choices that I personnaly didn't know where to begin. The whole place was filled with the smell of foods, an olfactory extravaganza with a heavy influence of fried food. My first choice was an Argentinian dish, an empanada, which was positively delicious. Once we met up with Leo and Natali, who orchestrated this venture, we got down to the hard core eating. They enjoyed some Japanese seafood balls while I had a German bratwurst, tried some churro, and finished up with a delicious spinach and ricotta panzarotti. It was a lot of deep fried and fatty foods, so this is clearly going to be no more than a monthly tradition, but it is definitely on the list of must do things in New Zealand. Aside from the Argentinian, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese booths, there were multiple Tai, Chinese, Korean, Malaysian, Greek, Indian, Hungarian, and more North American food booths. I will leave you with a picture of my favorite booth; a truck with a wood burning stove on the back for cooking pizza!

Certification

Well, it has been a very long time since I posted a blog. On the other hand, it has been a very busy couple weeks for me here in New Zealand. Since my last posting I have had several meetings with my supervisors, working out the details of my project, which I will try to get a posting up so you all can get an idea of what I will be doing for the next 2 2/3 years. It is kind of hard to believe that a third of the year has passed. The first day of spring is on September 1st here, so I survived a kiwi winter (as if you can call it winter) and I am heading into spring.

I have been living and breathing the material required to perform diving field work these past weeks, which is mostly to do with my absence. I have now completed an Oxygen administration course for diving, a Stress and Rescue course through SSI (Scuba Schools International), and I am (in the eyes of the New Zealand coastguard) now a BoatMaster! Other than that, the dolphins have returned twice, performing their aquatic and occasionally aerial acrobatics as well as a few thundershowers that were so close you could feel the walls shaking in the bunk room. I am sorry that I have been so very behind on the blog, but I promise to pick things up and get one out more regularly.