Day 8 Moorea

My name is Doni Doyle, I was chosen by Dr. Londraville to write tonight's blog. The same sugary cereal and boxed milk gets old after about the 4th day in a row so a few of us have been skipping breakfast and sleeping in an extra hour (shhh don't tell the Profs). In the morning both the lizard group and the fish group were working hard on their projects. The fish group finally finished all of there trials and are still analyzing their data (blenny pictures). The lizard group finished analyzing their gecko and skink data after stretching 4 moth skinks (Lipinia noctua). As the fish group went to run their trail on Blenny number 18 they found that it had tried to escape, Sean found him on the sidewalk in the sun covered thoroughly by ants. Obviously the fish didn't make it. In the afternoon Dr. Londraville went for a dive in the channel, seeing a few sea turtles. While he was diving the rest of the fish group was still hard at work analyzing their pictures. While the lizard group was also hard at work Dr. N invited us to go on a hike past the Belvedere lookout to a ridge between the two Mt. Summits called Mouaroa and Tamarutoofa. The hike took 2 hours to make it to the ridge but was completely worth it, for the view of Moorea from one beach all the way across to the other. Another cool part of our hike was when we came across the BamBoo forest, it was incredible to see how tall they get with their leaves only on top and the ground completely covered by thin peices of bamboo. The hike was uphill the entire way, so near the end we were completely exhausted, luckily we made it back just in time for the perfect dinner of stirfry and salad with the Tahitian dressing. That dinner definitely hit the spot. After dinner everyone prepared for the night snorkel that Dr. Londraville was nice enough to guide us on. On the truck ride to the night snorkel at Whitehouse all of the students realized that they were under a beautiful star filled sky about to snorkel in Tahiti. We were all extremely excited. On the night snorkel we saw plenty of shallow coral which we barely made it over along with a variety of fish different then what we have seen during the day in the same area. We saw alot of crabs, alot of sea cucumbers, and a few sleeping fish. While snorkeling in waist deep water I noticed a orange and white striped fish with really long pectoral fin rays, I yelled for Dr. Londraville and he thought I was dying, when he found out I had only seen a "cool fish" everyone swam on, later when we put our heads up and were doing a head count I found another fish with the pectoral fin rays and pointed it out, Dr. Londraville informed us that it was a venemous Clearfin Turkey Fish (Pterois radiata).
The Previous picture is a clown fish in a sea anemone.
The question was asked of what all the students are doing with their majors. Laura Young plans on attending graduate school for Zoology. Shawna Koch is using her biology major to hopefully get into Vet. School. Sean Santangelo is doing secondary education in biology and chemistry to teach high school science. Heather Bickimer is specailizing in Animal Physiology. Sarah Young has a degree in sociology and criminology and is working on Chemistry for her intrest in forensics. Brittany Heflin and Doni Doyle are using their biology to hopefully get into Medical School.