Rain and sting rays

Greetings from Pez Maya.

Today it rained and the clouds are menacing. No diving. No volleyball. But plenty of flies and grey skies.

Last night, after 3 successful days of diving, the skies parted and it poured. From my bunk I woke to spatters of rain hitting my face. And today, Thursday 13th October, we are all stuck under the big blue tarp of the communal area watching the weather eagerly, scratching our bites.

In the last 4 days so much has happened, I:

• Am now a PADI qualified diver, and I’m now working toward my Advanced Open Water so I can dive to 30 metres!
• Dived to 18 metres where we saw a 1.5 metre wide Southern Sting Ray. It let us get really close before gliding away majestically
• Cooked a million cookies for everyone to boost moral- today I’m cooking zucchini bread. Everyone needs a pick-me-up after a day of sitting watching the skies
• Continued my blood drive for local insects
• Manned the radio for hours- I love radio talk: “Vision (boat) this is Pez Maya (base), you have four divers and you’re heading to Hang Ten (dive site) and you’ll be 1.5 hours. Standing by.” (nerdy I know...)

Basically life here on the base has fallen into a nice rhythm, all 29 staff and volunteers work together like a well oiled machine. All volunteers now have monitoring jobs around the base. We each get to sign up for one. I signed up for three.

I’m on photo duty whereby I’ll help collect and take photos for the blog. Second, I’m on kitchen duty, where Robyn (a South African volunteer) and I will go through our “deli” of vegetables (which is basically a raccoon proof cabinet/cage that holds our veggies and fruit) and determine what’s on its last legs and needs to be allocated to the “next day box.” And finally, I decided to face my fears of the compressors, which are the two scary, loud, clanky machines that fill our tanks with air, and become one of the daily monitors.

Basically, there is always something to be done on base. I’ve also taken ownership of the “science board” redo, which involves painting, drawing and redesigning the information about monitoring, fish and coral. And this morning I was on bird partol, where we walk to the bridge where the mangrove enters the sea to identify and count birds. My favourite was the Magnificent Frigatebird.

Despite our constant interactions with nature- as a group we have seen turtles, dolphins, sharks and rays on our dives, and I continue to dodge baby iguanas daily- we are also learning about the threats to the reef. Martin, the English dive master and all round legend, taught us about deforestation, chemical pollution, climate change, invasive species and fishing.

Its crazy, we are on a NATIONAL RESERVE and just yesterday we pulled a long line out of the sea. Now, a long line is a way of fishing. A huge rope, extending for up to a hundred kilometres, with huge hooks to catch anything really, is dropped off the back of a boat and a number of days later pulled back onto the same boat. The line would have been laid to catch a particular fish, blue fin tuna, for example, and any by product, whether it be shark, turtle, or other fish is merely cut and tossed back in the sea. By the way, the by product makes up roughly 75% of the catch.

Apparently here in Mexico, some people have licenses to long line fish in the reserve. Its almost laughable, almost, if you have a really sick sense of humour.

Its when I come into contact with facts like these that it makes me question everything. Why doesn’t everyone know about this? Why didn’t I know about this? What can I do? Just me, a little dot in the sea? Well, Martin informed us that, as cheesy as it sounds, we can each do a little bit. From trying to eat sustainable seafood to avoiding the use of plastic grocery bags (they are often washed out to sea in our sewers and sea turtles eat them and die) and even just avoiding the use of plastic (just the other day on the beach clean I picked up a piece of plastic with a fat label on it: “Biodegradable” with a picture of a smiling planet giving the thumbs up, which was clearly not degradable, and was clearly just rubbish on the beach). Its so easy to get overwhelmed with the size of the effect we are having on the ocean, that we forget that a little bit here and a little bit there can add up to a substantial positive impact.

I guess I keep coming back to that Mother Teresa quote:

“We cannot do great things in this world, only small things with great love.”

Speaking of small joys, everyone has just run off for a sand castle competition. So, I’m off for a swim. There is something soul-soothing about swimming in 30 degree water in the rain.

Hugs from Pez Maya.

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Greetings again from Pez Maya.

Its now Saturday 15th October. Since I wrote the last blog it has not stopped raining. Not even for a second. Sometimes it pours, to the point there you can actually wash your hair in the rain, and other times its just a constant drizzle (but not strong enough to keep the mosquitoes away unfortunately). The well is about to overflow so “Water Warrior Tina” has retired, replaced instead with “Witch Tina” (I seriously got called a witch for baking zucchini bread for everyone to lift moral! They said it must have been magic that made such an average vegetable taste so good!).

The weather was so bad the local turtle festival was postponed to next weekend- who is going to bless this years turtles!? They sure need a blessing with a 1 in 1000 chance of making it to adulthood!

Due to the crazy weather, many of the volunteers started the weekend early and headed into town for such luxuries as warm showers and electricity. I chose instead to stay on base. Aside from the fact that the road to town is now pot-hole-central, today is the first time in 2 weeks where I have had a second of Tina-time. Its been lovely to have time to play with my photos, time to write, to read- I just started a great book called... wait for it... Oceans.

So, aside from bed hopping (mine was soaked in the monsoon rains and now resembles a small swimming pool) and showering in the rain and body boarding in the rain, life on base is still good.

I still pinch myself regularly. The other day we had the most beautiful full moon. I went for a run in the morning to watch the full moon set and the sun rise simultaneously.

So, fingers crossed for the weather and this years turtle hatchlings. I’ll write more when I have some bad-ass diving stories.

But until then, hugs from Pez Maya.

Rain and sting rays