First visit to the motu

On Sunday evening, we drove out to the other side of Opunohu Bay and kayaked over to the small islands that are on the northwest corner of Moorea. It is a very short kayak, maybe a quarter of a mile, across a 40-50 ft deep channel. When we arrived, there was a great view of the north face of Moorea with a rainbow.

There were three other researchers with me. Molly, my friend who studies mantis shrimp, spent a little time digging up them and their burrows in the sand flats that had about 2 ft of water over them. We saw a black tip reef shark cruising very close to her, looking for flatfish, and we had to call out "shark!" But Molly wasn't worried, because sharks are actually pretty cool and it didn't want to stick around after it realized we were in the water anyway.

Sho is a post-doc (already has her Ph.D.) working on crab larvae. She and I went out to the end of the motu to set up a light-trap to catch larvae, which are attracted to light like moths. We also saw a pretty cool sunset on the motu.

Pete is an etymologist (someone who studies insects) working with the Moorea BioCode project. He was collecting moths to study their diversity on the island; he also used a light trap to attract them.

I waited until dark and then used a headlamp to walk around and collect large hermit crabs. I saw probably two dozen really big ones, ranging in size from a plum to a baseball! The hermit crabs come out at night to scavenge for food and to return to the sea to fill up their shells with water, which prevents them from drying out during the day. I saw two species that are closely related: the Strawberry hermit and the ruggie hermit.

I still haven't taken pictures of them, but I'll update the blog when I do!