Happy Malagasy Independence Day

My incredibly short work week is already over. Thursday is Madagascar’s Independence Day, so in the spirit of francophone culture, everything shuts down tomorrow. Because of the tides this week, we were able to do morning dives on the exterior, outside the barrier reef, both yesterday and today. Monday’s site was called Cathedral, named for its towering, coral-covered stone arches. The current was much stronger than I’m used to, which made my first-ever underwater photography trial rather interesting. For every good picture I took, there are three pictures of half a fish or person. This morning, we dove at Dippy, a giant, mountain-shaped reef structure with the biggest fish I’ve seen yet. We were working on benthic point outs but were distracted by two huge moray eels, several lion fish, a scorpion fish, and a banded cleaner shrimp. Quite a dive for our area of the country. I feel confident about all the benthic species we record for survey purposes: distinguishing between soft corals, hard massive coral, submassive, digitate, encrusting, tabular, foliose, invertebrates, various algae, tunicates, corralimorphs, gorgonians, etc.

Alice, another volunteer intern, Niall, the real intern, and I are catching a taxi brousse to Tulear at 6:00 tomorrow morning to buy food and supplies for our extended weekend adventure. If all goes as planned, which it rarely does in Madagascar (especially on holidays), we’ll be on another taxi brousse by mid-morning for a pleasant twelve-hour ride to Ranomafana. Rahn-oh- mah-fah-nah is one of Madagascar’s rain forested national parks, established by a Duke University professor in 1991 to protect a species of lemur found that was thought extinct. Now, there are at least seven species of lemurs in the park, two of which are nocturnal. For two or three days, depending on the transportation situation, we’ll explore the forest, the local museum featuring park history and science, as well as the natural hot springs that exist in the village a few kilometers south of the park. As neither Niall nor Alice speaks any French or Malagasy, I’ll be serving as Official Trip Translator. I hope we don’t end up on a boat to Mozambique.
To mouse lemurs, giant giraffe beetles, and long taxi brousse rides...I’ll be back by 7:00 on Monday morning, Malagasy time (9:00 a.m.).