We had our first dolphin sightingstoday! A pod of about 8 dolphins (most likely common dolphins – Delphinus delphis) were sighted by the team bow-riding in front of the Menami in the morning,  and a couple of larger dolphins, probably bottlenose (Tursiopstruncatus) were seen bow-riding as well in the afternoon... aaand I missed both sightings... I was up on the Menami’s upper deck on both occasions, and by the time I went down, they were already gone :(Oh well, hopefully theseare signs of things to come, need to stay positive and spend more time in the lower deck!

This morning, we left the bay where we spent the night, and sailed eastbound along the northern shores of Alor. The diving sites that we’ll be sampling in the coming few dayswill be our first control samples outside the Alor KKPD Border! I will write a bit more on the importance of having control samples in a separate journal entry :)

Unfortunately, our second daydid not go so well. We had to leave a bit late this morning (our original plan was to set sail at 5 am, but in the end, we sailed at about 6.30 am) as the Menamicrew needed to carry out some engine maintenance in the morning, which meant that we can only do two dives as well today. When we reached out first site in Taramana, the wind was blowing quite strong from the north. Due to the challenging underwater conditions in the northern shores of Alor,the dive team leaders decided that only the more experienced divers get to dive. The teams had a hard time finding a good patch of reef to sample, as this area is prone to blast fishing thus reducing most of the corals to rubble. By the time Team A leftMenami, the wind picked up even more and light rain started to fall.As a result, Team B (who is waiting for the dinghy to come back)and the rest of us who are not involved in today’s dive scrambled to secure our laptops and electronic devices. Fast forward to 10 minutes later, the clouds have passed and the sun was out again.

After team A finished the dive, it was proving even more difficult than yesterday to pick them up, as the wind generated high waves and blew towards the shore, preventing Menami from getting close to the divers, who in the end had to swim back to Menami. As we met up with team B, they also had a hard time unloading and moving from the dinghy to Menami due to the rough waves, one team member, Pak Mus, even fell overboard, luckily he quickly swam around to the other side of the dinghy to avoid being squished between the two vessels.The wind continued to pick up and the wave became even higher as we sailed towards our next potential dive site. Our worries came true as we reached the next potential dive site, and even the one after that, as weather conditions prevented us from diving in both of these locations, forcing us to continue to the next dive site which is further on the north-eastern shore of Alor. Thus in the end, out of the three previously identified potential dive sites on the northern shores of Alor the teams only managed to dive in one, obtaining only two control samples. In addition, one of the dive team members became seasick and ended up ‘feeding the fishes’ after the first dive, thus he is out of action for the rest of the day.

Fortunately, weather and sea conditions in the next dive site was much better, enabling us to obtain another two control samples (despite only at the 10 meters depth, due to time, personnel, and gear limitation), making it a total of four control samples today. The boat now takes refuge in a bay near the village of Mausama, not far from the afternoon diving site.
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