June 27, 2012

Since we arrived in Raroia, it has been windy and we have been doing chores on the boat - laundry, cleaning, maintenance, etc.  This morning, there was no wind and we went ashore in the dinghy at the crack of dawn looking for the "Crake"!  Alas, no Crake!  However, it was a glorious outing.  We walked across the narrow sandy beach to a tidal pool/stream that empties into the lagoon.  


On the southeast shore of the atolls, the motus are low or non-existent.  The waves crash on the reef, the water pours across the reef and into the lagoon, and then out the pass.  Since coral only grows fully submerged in water, the outer edge of the reef grows seaward, leaving basically dead reef behind it.  So the width of the reef here from lagoon side to sea side is about ½ mile. Walking it is like walking on lava - a'a to the nth degree.  The very rough salt surface at the Devil's Golf Course in Death Valley is about the same.  


As we walked across the beach and reef toward the ocean, we found a large number of interesting critters. First were the large hermit crabs.  As they grow, they need to keep moving into bigger shells.  Eventually, they get large for the moon snail shells and can not totally withdraw inside.  This makes it easy to remove them from their shells, once you know the trick.  Their nice soft tails that hold them into the shell also makes great fish bait.  Not only that, but the sharks do not recoginize the taste and will ignore the bait for a while.  I collected five and will try fishing for large grouper-type fish in the depths of the lagoon later.  There was also a large ghost crab, large drab land crabs, colorful crabs by the water.  


Then in the shallows of the tide pool/stream, we saw a beautiful emerald-colored Big Bellied Parrot Fish eating algae off a piece of dead coral, a number of Peacock Flounders and/or Tropical Sole, five sandy-gray colored moray eels to 4 feet, a black-tipped reef shark about 3 feet long, a 3-foot long coronet fish, hundreds of small, dark brown sea slugs and a beautiful fresh mollusk shell about 1 ½ inches long with nobody home inside.  


Soon, as the tide started coming up, the slow flow of water in the stream became much higher and moving quickly like a small river rushing down a canyon.  We saw the following birds:  Tuamoto Reed Warbler, black and white morf Pacific Reef Herons, Great Crested Terns, Blue-grey Noddys, boobies, Bristle-thighed Curlews, Tuamotu Sandpiper, Wandering Tattler, Sanderling .  It is for times like this morning that we live on a boat and sail 3,500 miles to get to a place like this.

We collected three plastic floats while beach coming to help lift our anchor chain off the bottom to preserve the coral clumps that slowly grow there.  These floats are used by the pearl farmers to suspend their oyster lines 6 or 8 feet below the surface.  The floats we collected had come loose, drifted away and been abandoned.

I got Venus figured out.  It is passing through Taurus.  Aldebaran is the red eye of the Bull.  


Yesterday: Long-tailed Cuckoo.  Big deal to us birders.