Daily Log Report for
15
May 1997
Submitted by Richard Pyle
After lunch, we headed back out to Augulpelu Reef to do a quick scuba dive (yes, conventional air scuba - yucko), so they could film me reinact portions of my bends incident. All they wanted was scenes of me using conventional scuba bolting towards the surface, to use as abstract background during the portion of the film when I describe what happened that fateful day 11 years ago (they promise me it won't be tacky!). Even though it was air scuba, it was sort of fun doing these bolt towards the surface. Obviously, I didn't do any continuous fast ascent for more than about 15 feet or so, and we did a lot of decompression time, even though we weren't anywhere near the decompression limits (just to be safe).
We were joined today
by Sara Shoemaker, this year's "Our World
Underwater" scholar, who flew in to Palau yesterday
after a stint aboard the Truk (Chuuk) Aggressor
live-aboard (with Stan Waterman). I've met many of the
former OWU scholars, and all of them have been wonderful
people with promising futures in marine science. In the
short time I've interacted with Sara, it is
overwhelmingly clear that her future looks extremely
bright. Adam Ravetch,
underwater film-maker and constant source of
entertainment on this expedition, was the OWU scholar for
1985/86. Small world!
The film crew leaves tomorrow, and we leave next Monday. The expedition feels as though it is winding down right now. We've achieved what we came here to do -- discover new species and get footage for the documentary. We plan to keep the next few days relaxing; although we will still likely conduct a few more deep dives.
Late in the day, just outside our room, there was a magnificent rainbow over the nearby Rock Islands. It was a complete, unbroken arch -- a rare sight. I did what I could to photograph it, but as usual, the picture does not do the scene justice. In any event, I took it as a good omen.
