Whale song

This week I also managed to tick off a few things from my before I leave tick-list.
One of them was to do some table coral measuring on a dive site called Cloisters. We went there on Wednesday and I had a really gorgeous dive there measuring table corals and getting exciting over the variety and abundance of coral. It is a very colourful and pretty site and one of my favourites.
I also logged my 500th dive on Friday on a dive site near the sandy coral island of Andramambala. I'd gone there with five volunteers, Louis (field scientist) and Thomas as our boat driver. It was quite an eventful trip overall. It was extremely calm when we left Andavadoaka's poo beach at 7am on Thursday morning, but by the time we arrived on the island, the waves had picked up and it was pretty rough. We dropped off our stuff and went for our first dive on the reef that we were surveying.
Before the dive, my Lizzie's high pressure hose burst and she had to use the spare
regulators. Then on the dive, her tank slid off and I had to reattach it.
The dive site wasn't very interesting and the swell made doing science quite tricky. Lizzie lost her fin as we got back on the boat after the dive. Oops.
Unfortunately that wasn't all of our bad luck. The weather picked up so that by the time we got back in, it was really rough and very windy. I was too cold to go back in for a second dive. Thomas filled up the tanks (we'd taken a small compressor with us) and we went back out for the next dive with Lizzie (my buddy) and I as boat marshals. But then the high pressure hose on Louis' kit burst! So he had to use my regulator to dive. Luckily, by the time they descended the wind had died down and that dive was uneventful and we got back to the island safely in time for lunch. One of the women on the one of the tiny settlements had cooked us beans and rice.
Afterwards Alec - a lovely young man (as many of our young male volunteers have been) - and I went for a walk and took my binoculars. We spotted two whales while sat on sand dunes looking out to sea. That evening, we made a fire and the lady who'd cooked for us earlier and her family brought us dinner of octopus, fish soup, rice, two kinds of fish and omelette. What a feast. We made a fire and told stories and then slept out by the stars. The only thing marring this rather pleasant experience was a persistent smell of poo. I wasn't too cold as I slept in all my clothes and my sleeping bag, but woke up a few times to put my woolly hat back on.
We woke on Friday morning and munched on some biscuits before heading out to dive a site that BV has only dived once before. We were now down to five divers as we'd lost two sets of regulators the day before so there were two boat marshals.
On the way out to the site, Thomas called out that there was a whale (or two) in the distance. I didn't manage to see it. But as we were descending on our dive, all of us could clearly hear the whale song. It was an eery sound. Sort of booming and out of tune. It was extremely exciting to hear though.
Then, about five minutes into the dive Roger - a 64 year old American volunteer - pointed out a green turtle on a ledge just below us. We had a really good sighting of it as it woke up, sleepily assessed the situation, looked around and then lazily swam off. The dive continued to be enjoyable after that as I found lots of little flatworms and nudibranchs to engrosse me. The site was interesting but there were very very few fish and only 10% live coral cover. We heard the whale song again later on during the dive. I looked out into the distance but did not see it.
That dive had been so good, I thought our run of bad luck had ended but on the second dive, Lizzie went through her air in about 7 minutes (we think there was something wrong with her kit as well) and ended her dive early and then I was quite discombobulated and while untangling a tape measure managed to let go of the SMB (surface marker buoy) and so we had to abort the dive as per BV protocol. Luckily, it was picked up by the boat marshal. The dive lasted a total of 20 minutes for me. It was my 500th and I shall probably remember it - though not for the right reasons! The 499th was more positively memorable.
Our underwater concert wasn't the only whale encounter this week. Most of the group us saw one half way between the shore and the horizon on Tuesday over breakfast. We were able to see it quite well with binoculars and saw it breach quite a few times. There were also sightings by divers after their dives on two separate occasions. Justin and I also had some very good sightings from the whale watching platform on Nosy Hau on Sunday. We saw about seven or eight in total, including a group of three which were very active - slapping their fins and coming half out of the water. It was exciting - despite being quite far away.

Village news
As well as being a good week for whales, it's also been a good week for peanuts and tomatoes - as both appear to be in season and in abundance in the village at the moment. There are numerous tiny stalls along the main street piled high with small tomato pyramids. Five cherry tomatoes cost less than 7p at the moment. Though sometimes the prices vary depending on who is womaning the stall and whether or not she thinks you'll pay more for them than that.
It's also been a good week for the peanut lady as she seems to have sold rather a lot of jars of home made peanut butter to this group of volunteers. She is now charging 4,000 ariary per jar (up from 3,000 last time I bought some) which is quite a lot of money (£3.30) in this village.
Meanwhile, samosa boy - the young boy who comes up to Coco Beach twice a day selling samosas to hungry BV staff and volunteers - has now apparently extended his range to selling us bok bok as well. And it's rather delicious bok bok too.

Finally, I am getting ready for my concert which will take place on 2nd August. So far, I have taught the group Da Do Ron Ron and James is teaching us one of his songs as well. Hopefully we will be more tuneful than the whales! We will rehearse every day this week. I am looking forward to it, but hope that we will have other participants from the village and an audience as well. I'll let you know all about it next week which will be my penultimate blog from site! The end, as they say, is now in sight.