A little info about Moorea and what made the island

Oh my gosh, the picture upload actually worked! Uploading or downloading anything at Gump is strictly regulated because it uses so much bandwidth and the connection is slow as it is. I will try to upload more, but it appears I can only do one photo at a time. This is a picture of the lagoon here, and you can see the mountains in the background. Moorea is very mountainous because at one time it was a volcano, but it slowly started disingrating (bad word choice, any scientists out there will hate me for it), and now it is no longer active. As it collapsed, a fringing reef was created around the island. This reef used to be the base of the volcano, but now it is merely a reef that surrounds the island like a ring. It is about 500-1000 meters away from the island. In the lagoon (the part inside of the reef) it has pretty calm waters and there is a ton of coral. Nearer to the fringing reef, the coral is pretty beat up and there is not a ton of living coral because the waves are constantly breaking on it. Outside of the reef there is a lot of coral as well, but the waves are harsher, and you are not as protected if you are diving out there. Because of that, most people conduct their research in the lagoon. But there is still some pretty incredible stuff outside of the reef; a couple of the grad students went diving out there not too long ago and came back with these incredible photos of sharks and sea turtles swimming amongst them. Because it requires bigger boats and more bravery than at least I am equipped with currently, we won't spend a lot of time outside of the reef. Jada's study sites are inside the lagoon. I actually won't be diving that deep. The coral that we will be working with are only about 6 feet below the water surface. We'll be heading to the sites and diving later today, so there will probably be a post later if the internet holds out.

Love to all,
Emily