The Motion of the Ocean

I'm finding that even on land, I feel like I'm at sea, I guess my inner ear has imprinted the rocking of the boat... my bed has become a raft...

even as I sit here typing, I feel like I'm moving up and down...

...memories of childhood flood back (another watery metaphor)... in which the living room was an ocean and we crossed from side to side on top of the furniture, never allowing ourselves to touch the floor.

E. went with the divers to Peleliu yesterday, and I went with the snorkeling group from IMPAC. There were 4 Americans on the boat yesterday and 8 Japanese snorkelers. We stopped at the Milky Way to beautify ourselves with the mud (and to swim around in the milky turquoise water) then onto a snorkel spot (noting one large sea cucumber there has led to some online research... with a need for a better connection and time to do more, tabled until I get back to Arizona.)

A second snorkel spot was around the pier where we were docked while the other people went on the Jellyfish lake tour, which I won't be doing. Actually I went pretty far from the pier along the coastline, just casually kicking along.. the boat followed me. I didn't see anything different than what I've already been seeing, but I do like to observe the fish. Occasionally they seem to be doing something purposeful... as when the Rock Moving Wrasse pick up stones (or broken pieces of coral lying on the ocean floor) in search of food. The parrotfish always SEEM to be going somewhere important....rather like Alice's white rabbit...

there were a couple medium size Tridacta clams... sitting open like ladies' handbags on the ocean floor. When I went by they responded with a little shudder and tightened up their shells a bit.

The last place where everyone snorkeled, was a spot called Paradise. The resident Napoleon Wrasse and his lady wrasses were there to greet us today. The coral are quite beautiful in this spot... which looks landscaped in comparison to some of the other areas I've snorkeled in, which are interesting if haphazard in their arrangement.

At lunch break today, "Win" (short for Winfield) showed a few of us how to make a woven zig zag pattern out of a coconut palm frond.

This was the most crafting I've done in weeks.