Daily log from the Oscar Elton Sette

By John Dax Moreno
Special to the Saipan Tribune

The Marianas Archipelago Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program, or MARAMP 2005 cruise, has completed the first leg of its voyage, and successfully returned to Saipan on Sept. 19, 2005 to restock on supplies, host tours on the ship, replace buoys at Managaha Island, drop off and pick up staff, and for a little rest and relaxation.

The scientists and crew of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel Oscar Elton Sette finished their evaluation and mapping of the shallow reef habitats of the Mariana Archipelago, including the islands of Guguan, Pagan, Asuncion, Uracas, Maug, Agrihan, Alamagan, Sarigan, Anatahan, and other underwater features such as Supply Reef and the Zealandia Bank. The ship is now on its second leg of the trip visiting Pathfinder and Arakane Reef to the west of Saipan. The Sette will be leaving Tinian on Sept. 27 to visit Aguihan.

Qamar Schuyler, the onboard educator and coral outreach specialist for the CNMI Coral Reef Initiative, has been sending daily logs of the cruise to the Coastal Resources Management website: www.crm.gov.mp/maramp.

Many teachers and students have been following along the cruise via the website as Schuyler describes the everyday work and the discoveries of the scientists and crewmembers. Many have also interacted with the staff on board the Sette by sending questions via the website.

Here is a sample of Schuyler’s daily log for Sept. 26, 2005:

“Motoring slowly past steep limestone cliffs, we could see large caverns penetrating into the rock wall. We nosed the small boat into one of them, and a flurry of brown noddies spilled from the entrance. At another, a lone booby stood, left behind on his perch after the noddies had gone. He looked around in apparent confusion, or indecision, lifting one foot, then the other. Finally, after we had already passed, he decided to flee.

On the land high above, I could barely make out features I recognized. First, the buildings at Suicide Cliff. Then, the road leading to the blowhole. Seen from a whole new perspective, these familiar Tinian landmarks helped me find my bearings. It is funny how different things seem from a small boat. Staring up at cliffs I usually look down from gave me a new understanding of their height. The water crashing below seems much more vivid when you are rocked by the same swells that later explode into bursts of whitewater.

“Comparing the way Tinian looked from the water to a similar view of the Northern Islands helped me comprehend the differences in their geologic formation. As I wrote about in the log of Sept. 11, the islands north of Farallon de Mendinilla are all volcanic in origin. In other words, they were formed by volcanoes under the sea. The volcanoes erupted many times over until the build up of lava eventually broke the surface, forming a land mass. In contrast, the southern islands were formed by uplifting and sea level change. The underlying structure of the southern islands is also volcanic, much like the northern islands. However, the land that we see now is actually ancient reef, formed when the sea level was much higher relative to the land. The volcanoes were submerged, allowing corals to grow. Over many years, the corals laid down a thick skeleton of calcium carbonate, or limestone, on top of the volcanic rock. Then a combination of sea level fall and the islands being raised up through a geological process called uplifting exposed the islands we see today.

“My foray along the cliffs of Tinian was made possible by the mooring team. Ron had some data to catch up on, so I took his place for much of the day. We did a number of CTDs around the island, measuring the salinity, temperature, and depth every mile, and then installed an STR (subsurface temperature recorder), which will monitor the ocean temperature every 20 seconds for the next two years. After our STR dive, just off of Long Beach, we still had air left in our tanks, so we decided to do another dive off of the cliffs along the east coast. The site we chose was mostly a Halimeda reef, in other words, covered with Halimeda algae. The calcium carbonate skeleton produced by this algae is the source of much of the sand on beaches near coral reefs worldwide. The site was fairly flat, with not a lot of variability, but we did see a large turtle in the beginning of our dive, and at the end, a huge stingray! Called the blackblotched stingray (Taeniura meyeni), it was about 4 feet wide and so fat that at first I thought it was sitting on top of a huge rock. It was completely docile, allowing me to approach and take numerous close-up shots. It didn’t even move when I gently touched its wing. It was not until I returned to the ship that I found I out I probably should have stayed far away from the animal. When I related my story to Joe, he said, ‘You touched that thing?? Don’t you know they’ve killed two people!’ He didn’t say ‘and you could have been the third,’ but I sure thought it. According to the book Reef and Shore Fishes of the South Pacific, blackblotched stingrays have a venomous spine about halfway down their tails. It was this spine that killed a diver who thought it was a manta ray, and grabbed on to the wings to hitch a ride. The book didn’t go into details about the fate of the other. I was especially glad not to have been added to that count when we got back to the ship and smelled the scent of roasting fish…barbecue night!”

The cruise will be wrapping up their research voyage on Rota on Sept. 30. The MARAMP website is updated daily with Schuyler’s accounts of the voyage and she also answers many of the questions that are submitted via the MARAMP website. Share in the discoveries by logging on today!

(Moreno is the Coastal Resources Management Office’s Outreach & Education coordinator.)