Fiji's Number 1 Bag Lady, Me!

My last week volunteering at Barefoot Island was awesome. I was able to almost triple the number of dives I've done! I'm now up to 27! I feel so much more confident and at ease in the water now, like a real diver. Some days I felt like I could have just swam off into the deep with the Manta Rays and never come up!

Everything is A-OK

Me and my co-volunteer Justine formed the J-Team, Marine Warriors, and it was our mission to remove as many of the Crown of thorns starfish as possible. When you have a reef full of evil starfish, who are you gonna call... the J-TEAM!! I was usually the bagger, and Justine, or our divemaster, Al was usually the hooker (get your mind out of the gutter lol) because they were the ones to pry them off the reef with a metal hook and then I would come along and collect them in the bag.

J-Team!

I really feel like I accomplished a lot during my time at Barefoot Island. By the end of my two weeks, I had earned the title of best bag lady ever! I was not scared of those poisonous thorny bastards- I just wanted to get them in the bag as soon as possible so we could go find more! Poison, shmoison! I also broke the record of highest number of COTs removed from the reef by a volunteer EVER!!! YES, that's right!! But I think I also broke the record for most hungover volunteer ever... the morning after Fiji Day was not pretty... everyone told me I was turning green on our boat ride back to shore after our first dive, and they were right. But I powered through and got it done! Also an honourable mention goes out to Justine and Al who shared the prize as the best hookers ever! hehehe!

Our record breaking haul of COTs in the wheelbarrow... 5 bags, 98 nasty starfish off the reef

When I was done at Barefoot Island, I spent a few days on the main island checking it out. There were so many interesting people there. I met an awesome (arguably crazy?) Elvis impersonator from Atlantic City, who ended up being my neighbour at my hostel. Each morning I would wake up to the sweet Elvis voice coming from the room next door coaxing my eardrums to start a new day. And then there was the Canadian white rapper, who partied harder than anyone I've ever seen, I swear that kid didn't sleep, but he made up a totally awesome and hilarious half hour long rap about me and my friend Semi on the spot! We only wished we had captured it on video! Damn!

Me, Semi from Barefoot and Elvis went to the natural mud pools near Nadi

I spent my last day in Fiji at the Cloud 9 Bar. This is a sleek, modern, floating lounge / dance club right out in the middle of the ocean beside the world famous Cloudbreak reef. I have never dreamed that such a place existed. It was a perfect day of lounging in the sun, watching the surfers and chatting with them when they came in for a drink, snorkeling, and diving off the top deck (scary!). Needless to say it was a great relaxing day and the perfect wind down from all my volunteer activities. But then on the way back to town while we were riding in the boat, it started to rain. I thought it would be a kinda crappy way to end off the day, but the rain tapered down, and directly in front of us formed a big huge rainbow. We cruised for about 15 minutes straight towards it, a beautiful swatch of colours illuminating the sky. As I took in that moment, and breathed in the fresh clean sea air after the rain, it felt like the perfect ending to an incredible trip.

Cloud 9 Bar

My main activity of the day :)

Rainbow! Bye Fiji!

Manta Rays, Evil Starfish and Giant Clams

I was really excited to come to this island in Fiji since it is famous for the Manta Ray channel, a spot where the species regularly congregates from May - September each year. But for my first 5 days here, the Mantas decided to take a hike, and they weren't around. I was beginning to worry that I'd completely missed the season! But yesterday, I woke up to the staff banging a drum going around the resort yelling "MANTA RAY! MANTA RAY!" at the top of their lungs. They seemed almost as excited as me! I hopped into my bikini faster than ever, and literally ran down to the boat. The staff were looking at me a little weird and were like, you don't actually have to run, you know, haha :P It took a while to find the ray, but once we did, it was amazing. For a few minutes, I swam right above it as it effortlessly glided through the turquoise blue depths, not even noticing I was there. Here is a video taken by my fellow volunteer a few days ago. Enjoy!

I've started working on a few of my volunteer projects this past week. One of the jobs is to remove the nasty Crown of Thorns Seastar from the reef. These creatures skulk around the coral, munching on it and devastate large tracts of reef in their path. I can't decide if they are ugly or beautiful, but either way, they are covered with long venomous spikes that would not feel good if they pricked you. We go diving and pry them off the reef with a hooked piece of rebar, and then collect them in a big nylon bag. My job is usually the bag carrier, since they can be tricky to spot, but that means that my partner is always pointing these spiky masses of venom at me underwater, and I have to manoeuver them into a bag with an opening roughly the same size as the creature without pricking myself or my partner. It is not easy!! But it is lots of fun.

Me with one Crown of Thorns

Our catch of the day

Alan digs them a grave behind the dive shop.  RIP evil starfish.

One of the reasons the Crown of Thorns is such a problem, even though it is native to Fijian waters, is that all of its natural predators have been overfished. Another part of the project here is to reintroduce one of the overfished predators called the Giant Clam. They can reach up to a meter in size when fully grown and weigh over 300kg! So we have an underwater nursery here where we are growing some baby Giant Clams to basically replant them on the reef when they are big enough. Then they will filter feed and remove the Crown of Thorns larvae from the water naturally.

The clams in the nursery tend to get a bit sandy, and we keep track of their growth, so we dive down and clean them off with a toothbrush and measure them.

One of the older clams, this guy is about a foot long!

Cleaning off the little clams in the cages (yep that's me in the back!)

Marlies showing you how it's done with a toothbrush