Yesterday was my first day at work and Dr. Steve O'Shea is such a character! He is very random and hard to follow but has a great sense of humor. We created a detailed plan for the next ten weeks of what to do to get this research done ontime. Our work is going to be studying sea-bed structure and the diversity in each type to determine the level of importance of each so they can preserve the ones with the most specie diversity. It is to help conservation of marine protected areas. A lot of work will be done on the boat finding the sites to get our samples from and then once we have them we have to sort and identify for many hours. He said we are going to aim to get this published because there is nothing else like it and the location our 5 sites will be in is all along the northern side of Waiheke Island and when he showed us the historical map of were research has been done before... no one has looked here so he said he doesn't know what to expect! That makes this a huge deal and since we are only here for 10 weeks it's a huge time crunch, we're going to have to work some late nights i'm sure and it is all weather dependant or if the boat is available so today and tom. we don't have to even work, we're going to try again next week for our first boating day i hope it happens soon, not that i hate the time off it's fun exploring the new city! He also showed us videos of other research he has done on squids and they went down to antarctica and found so many new species to record! He also showed us sad sad videos of the whale strandings here, there are 300 a year here in New Zealand and he said we will most likely experience one, i teared up because the pictures show all kinds of whales and one was them burying an orca in the sand, the reason for these strandings is starvation that is why they look at whale stomache contents to see what they have eaten and usually it has nearly half as much as it needs to survive. Seals and dolphins also get stranded along the coast. It's very depressing and it's because of humans overfishing and over commercialization of squid their food to eat! I never ate calamari or squid but now i never will. I'm happy to be working with people who are so experienced though and care so much about the life of the marine animals, i definitely have that much in common with them!
After our first day at work!
The group celebrating after day 1 of work! Pig noses are because
a few of us laugh and snort! i'm not alone with that trait here! haha
Laura was also falling so i gave her a table hahaha
I love the big trees, it's hard to climb a palm tree back home lol
The sidewalk tunnel thingy, and lauras face is priceless!
Keeping warm in the phone booth!
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Today is Wednesday here the 3rd of June, and for our day off we booked bus tickets for Rotoroa this weekend! and then my friends Hannah and Sarah jumped off a building! yes the skytower the tallest jump in New Zealand, Lara and i waited on the deck to take video and pictures and it looked like so much fun, i'm going to try and get the courage i need to do it, i won't bungie or skydive but this is a controlled fall not free fall and the view up there is stunning so we'll see what happens, i live here so i have time! lol :o)
After our first day at work! 
The sidewalk tunnel thingy, and lauras face is priceless!
Keeping warm in the phone booth!
