June 19^th

Big water work day.  Piig Island, oceanic side and lagoon side and also Yealiil Island.  Science team went to a fourth site, too.  Beautiful reefs!  Saw a zebra shark – it was cruising lazily, pretty near to the surface, pretty near to midday.  They are nocturnal bottom-feeders so this was especially fortunate.  It was big, prehistoric-looking, from another world and time.  I swam after it, and it gradually let itself drop deeper, deeper, as it undulated forward, til it was out of sight through the crags of the reef beneath. 

We returned to Falalop, sunfried and exhausted, but with high spirits and smiles.  Kristin the statistician has arrived from the states!  Some of the interns and I hang out and chat with her on the beach, drinking tea and regrouping ourselves physically and mentally.  I watch four ants carry a wriggling caterpillar towards and then down into their hole in the sand.  It takes them 20 minutes to do this.