| P-MAN XII Progress
Report #07 - Nuts and bats; strong current; Flip covets
a yacht First off, a first person narrative from Mike Raible about his betel nut experience:
News! We have a DSL line into the ready room. Sure seems slower than last year and we can’t get our wireless network to work. So far though, it’s lightyears ahead of where we were. Today was a water day. But this time we have Jack Herbert from Marine Sonic with us. He arrived late last night and is here with us for just about a week. He’s going to school us on how to use our new SSS fish. So far, under his tutelage, we haven’t yet broken a shear pin. We went with Henni Rall (from Neco Marine) who knew where someone said a wing was. It was out in 70 feet of water in open ocean on top of a reef. We dropped a buoy where he said to. According to his source, the wing is 150 feet towards the reef from the buoy. What could be simpler. We all splashed in and started searching. Although it was pretty rough, and there was a pretty strong current, we all headed out on our search radials. I went back and forth a few times, saw Henni in passing a few times, and then held station pretty close to where I thought the buoy was for my safety stop. When I came to the surface, I found I had drifted a significant distance away from our search area without knowing it. And so did everyone else. The current wasn’t strong, it was ripping! But of all the places we’ve dived looking for airplanes, this was the prettiest. Most places are ugly mud flats with very little sea life. However, this reef was beautiful. When we splashed in, we were greeted by an eight foot shark swimming with a school of fish. Beautiful. We decided that it was too rough to dive again, and too rough for side scanning sonar work. So we headed to calmer waters inside the reef for lunch and a rest. After another fine lunch by Mike Raible, we tested the one armed manta boards that Paul built. Paul likes the one armed version and I think I like the two armed version. Both have their strengths. Now we just need a reason to use them. They are fun though. And when we can, we’ll get an underwater camera and show you what they look like in action. The afternoon was spent doing SSS sweeps in an area that may have a B-24 in it. It was on the west side of Palau so the water was calmer than the morning on the east side. We didn’t find anything noteworthy, but for all those who have been asking since last year, yes, we did see the Jake [a Japanese float plane] with it. We are really jazzed about this tool and we are really happy that Marine Sonic wants to help us. Quick change and out to dinner. All but Rick and Nicole. They went night diving and had a ball. We went to Carp and Mike tasted fruit bat for the first time. He didn’t order it but got to taste it from the table next to us. After we were done with our meal, Pat and I started telling Mike about fruit bat. I kept glancing at the next table and the woman there kept giving us really strange looks, even at one point making one of those ‘disgusted’ look faces. Well, seems she ordered a bat and wasn’t aware of what we were aware of about bats. She didn’t finish hers and offered the rest to Mike. I think her husband was really glad to leave the bat to someone else as well. As Mike said, “I don’t like it.” But, he can now say he’s tried another Palauan tradition. Mike and I went to the grocery store for supplies and now I’m sitting here writing to you. I guess the boat was really rocking today because either Palau is having a continuous earthquake, or the hotel has moved out to sea: I can really feel the waves. So now you’re up to date. No other pictures today, except of my new boat. What do you think?
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