My second week at work with the National Park Service of American Samoa started like every other day – bright and early. We got to the office by 7:30 and quickly had our weekly meeting with the whole marine team. We decided the rough plan for the week and once everything was agreed upon, we set out for the day. Today would be our last day of towboard surveys, as we had just about completed the entire north side of the island. We loaded up the boat, launched it, then motored out to the stopping point from the week before. Two snorkelers jumped in the water, grabbed the boards, and we were off! Progress was a bit slower than the week before, as we were finishing up on the most exposed part of the north side, so it was a bit choppier than the other days. But after a few times in and a few times out of the water, we had completed the entire north side! We all jumped back on the boat and headed to the boat ramp. I hopped out at the office with Kersten to see just exactly how all the data gets entered and the rest of the team went to put the boat and gear back in the warehouse. It was another long but fun day in the field and I was knackered from all that time in the sun!
At this point, I’d come to learn the Samoan term for COTS – alamea. The marine crew had actually created rashguards with the slogan “Alamea Slayer, death from above” as you are usually hovering above the COT as you injected it with oxbile. I immediately liked the ring to it and was looking forward to joining the ranks of alamea slayers!
Tuesday would be a very different but educational day for me. Once a year, water quality samples are taken from 15 points around the marine park, just to gather long-term data of water quality. For the day, half of the marine crew would be heading out to help with the water quality sampling and the other half would be going out to do COT management. Now that all the towboard surveys were complete, we could start going out and injecting COTS on site to exterminate them. For today, I’d be going out with Bert, Kristin, Kelsey (lead from the interpretive department), Ari, and Ari’s mom (who had just come in to visit). Paolo, Kersten, and Ian would take the small zodiac out to do a few COT extermination dives. They launched the zodiac first, as they wanted to get 3 dives in that day. In the meantime, the rest of us got all the gear prepared for the tests and we loaded up the larger boat, getting it ready to launch. Once the divers were successfully in the water, we put the boat in and got started on our work for the day. There were 15 constant locations where the samples are taken at each year.
At each site, niskin bottles are used at depth and at the surface to collect water and a probe is inserted at depth and just below the surface to gauge water temperature, salinity, and oxygen concentration. Each site takes about 20-30 minutes to gather all the data, and we quickly got to work. It was a fun change of pace, but good to see another aspect to the NPS work on the island.
We managed to get through 10 of the sites before deciding to pull into a protected cove, where I was finally getting to do my check out dive! Before I could volunteer as a diver in a National Park, I had to do a check out with a DSO to ensure that I was capable and qualified as a diver. Bert reviewed with me on the boat the skills he wanted me to go through- mask clearing and removal, regulator retrieval, out of air scenarios, emergency assent, ditch and don, and bailout. The first few didn’t worry me at all but the “ditch and don” and bailout skills made me a little nervous, just because they are skills you almost never use. Once in the water, I went through all the tasks as Bert asked me to, eventually getting to the ditch and don, where I have to completely remove all my gear, turn my air off, swim around at depth, the put it all back on again. Initially I had butterflies as I started, but it quickly dissipated as I realized that I’m so confident in the water that a complex skill like this was no big deal. I then climbed on the boat to do the bailout skill, where you are holding onto all your gear, with the air off, and you jump into the water, working on assembling and donning your gear on the descent. I completed both of these complex tasks under Bert’s careful supervision, and after a short little swim around the reef, I was given permission to dive as a volunteer in the Park! Back at the warehouse we met up with Ian and Paolo, who were filling tanks and doing some miscellaneous jobs on the boat’s maintenance. The divers had a successful 3 dives on the reef, eradicating just under 100 COTS by injecting them with oxbile. It had been a long day for everyone, and we all crashed shortly after dinner back at the house.
Wednesday would be a combination of the day before. We would spend the morning finishing the water sample collection from the last 5 sites and spend the afternoon doing two COT removal dives. It would be Visa, Bert, Kirstin, Kersten, Paolo, Ian, and me, which was an ideal group to get the jobs done. The morning went by quickly, as we had worked down an efficient routine to get all the samples collected. We then dropped Visa off at the boat ramp so she could get back to the office and working on her data as the rest of us went back out to do a few dives. We split into two groups – Bert, Kristin, Paolo and I would do the first dive. Before hopping in the water, Bert explained to me how to go about injecting a COT with oxbile, stressing to not puncture myself on a venomous spine of the COT or to not inject myself or anyone else with the oxbile. We jumped in the water and after Bert did one demonstration, he handed the bottle of oxbile and injection gun off to me so he could measure all the COTS I killed for data collection.
We went around the reef, looking into every nook and cranny for the COTS, which can fit themselves into the smallest of spaces. After 65 minutes or so, we called it a dive and headed back to the surface. Let me say right here that killing COTS is probably one of my new favorite things to do on a dive. I had a blast trying to find all the COTS hidden among the reef and the time flew by as I was so absorbed in the task. When we finished our dive, we hopped back on the boat and let Kersten and Ian jump in. They managed a nice long dive killing COTS and when they had surfaced, we loaded up the boat and headed back to the boat ramp.
Thursday was to be another day of fieldwork for a few of us. The big boat was to stay out of the water for some maintenance and the small zodiac can only comfortably fit 2 divers and one boat driver. Ian, Kersten, and I would be going out to kill COTS for the day while Kristin stayed at the office to work on some safety inventorying and Paolo did the boat maintenance. We loaded up the zodiac and headed out to an area that had been marked with a trail of scarring along the reef. We got the equipment ready and rolled into the water, hunting for the spiny, telltale arms poking out of crevices. We hopped back on the boat and had lunch while waiting out our surface interval.
The second dive started where the first had finished, still in the midst of a minor COT outbreak that we wanted to clean up inside the park. In total, we injected and measured just around 50 COTS, which is not bad. Ideally, there would be no COTS on the reef, but the small 50 is a drastic improvement from 2 years ago, where a major outbreak saw hundreds and thousands of the seastars roaming the reef. We headed back to the ramp where we trailered the zodiac and made our way back to the warehouse. Another week with the NPS finished and I was having a blast!
Friday was the start of our weekend and boy, could I really get used to this schedule of four, 10 hour workdays! It was a rainy and overcast morning, which we all spent feeling rather lazy, lounging around and reading some books. Just after lunch, Kristin invited me to do the small hike just behind the house. We went through a neighborhood to the trailhead, where we hiked a ridge behind the village and overlooking Pago Pago harbor. During WWII, the American army built a series of guns along the ridge to protect the harbor from potential invasion. Today, most of the guns have been removed, but they have left the giant concrete pits that the guns were situated in. At the end of the hike, two of these guns still remain, now coated in thich, army green paint. It was a fun, 1.5 hour hike up and around the ridge. To finish, we made a stop at Samu’s (a local ice cream shop with delicious, homemade ice cream) to treat ourselves. We sat on the beach and chatted, licking our ice cream and enjoying what turned out to be a nice afternoon.
Saturday we decided to spend the early afternoon attempting to catch some waves at a beach that Ian and Paolo heard about. Both the guys are fairly avid surfers and we loaded the car with a few surf and boogie boards, then made our way west to the beach. I thought it may be a good opportunity to try to work on my photography (especially my over/under shots) so I grabbed my camera rig, fins, and mask on the way out. We had a bit of a rain shower while we drove out to the beach, but we didn’t let that deter our plans for the day. We spent upwards of 3 hours in the water, playing with the waves as they gently rolled and broke on the reef. Paolo and Ian went off, catching waves further offshore while Nerelle, Kristin, Kersten and I kept to the small waves closer to shore. It was really fun to spend the afternoon rolling around in the water before we all were hungry and decided to find some food. We loaded up the car and headed to grab some fried chicken for dinner. To end the night, we all gathered at Ian and Nerelle’s apartment for a movie.
Sunday rolled around and it became clear that we needed some groceries for the upcoming week (especially because it was Thanksgiving on Thursday!) Kersten devised a perfect plan for the day: we spend the late morning hiking up a series of waterfalls near Coconut Point, then swing round the grocery stores to pick up food. We grabbed a friend, Leora, from Coconut Point, then made our way to the trailhead for the waterfalls. It was a short and easy hike to the first fall, which was also the biggest. Because of the rain over the last two weeks, it was gushing down over the rocks in quite the display! We decided to push upwards to the next fall. This involved some careful hiking up a steep hill, making a pit stop at the top of the first fall. We trekked up the river bed to the base of the second falls, which was smaller but far less visited. After cooling down in the freshwater pool at the base of the fall, we decided to push up to the third fall, which was just a short ways up the hill. We left our packs and scrambled up to the third falls, which was even smaller than the second.
The main attraction of this fall was a natural rock slide that you could zip down and plunge into a cool pool. We all did this a few times (it took Leora and me a few minutes of persuasion but we did it) before heading back down to grab our packs and work our way back to the car. The clouds had started to look gloomy and we wanted to be off the trail before any rain struck. Back at the car we had a nice snack before heading out to do our shopping. We made our rounds through several of the stores, dropped Leora off, then made our way back to the house to unload our food. I had been craving pizza for almost a week and we had bought a variety of things to make our own pizzas for dinner that night. Kersten made the pizza dough and before we knew it, we had 7 or 8 delicious pizzas for dinner. It was a tasty way to end the weekend and we all were off to bed early, with full stomachs and happy hearts.
