After 10 days of torrential downpours, low visibility, murky water, and heavy surge, the sun has finally returned. Our Mangareva work has been highly productive, and we’ve been fortunate to find some protection within the lagoon, but it’s been cold, wet, cold and wet.
During a mission, there is always a hope for calm seas and sunny skies as it makes data collection much easier. But we know that this may not always be the case. You make the best of it as you have a limited time to complete your work.
And that we did. We donned raincoats, thicker wetsuits and a hood, and accomplished everything we set out to do. We managed to survey the windward reef fronts, the submerged barrier reef and the diverse lagoonal habitats. The ciguatera team completed their three permanent study sites and added three new sites, and the groundtruthing team collected all the data necessary to create very detailed habitat maps of the region.
Next, our last atoll, Temoe.
(Photos By: 1- Joao Monteiro, 2 and 3 by Serge Andrefouet)
