french polynesia

happy holidays! pete and i just returned from a five and half week stint in french polynesia. we spent four weeks on the island of moorea helping teach a UCSC marine ecology field course. the students spent five weeks in santa cruz learning about coral reef ecology and then spent four weeks in moorea carrying out independent research projects. our days in moorea consisted of eating breakfast on the veranda of our beach house, diving or snorkeling with students in the morning and afternoon, dinner, planning for the next day, sleep. repeat. we were hosted by the french field station CRIOBE while we were in moorea. they allow us to use their boats and vehicles, provide us with our meals, and the students live at the station. the water in moorea is a welcome change from santa cruz - clear AND warm, which makes the field work a lot easier. unfortunately, the waters around moorea have had an outbreak of the crown-of-thorns seastar. these seastars are bad for a number of reasons - they eat coral so most of the reef is now dead coral, and they are extremely toxic. they have enormous spines (see photo below) that will go through a wetsuit with no problem. unfortunately, i had a little run-in with one of these guys. we were on a night dive with our students at one of our sites and my leg brushed up against one that i had not seen. :( fortunately, the three punctures did not get infected and i managed to avoid a trip to the emergency room!

teaching staff - melissa, tish, alessio, jimmy, my pete, giacomo, advisor pete, joe

opunohu bay - our home

shark tooth mountain - the view from the field station

giant clam

moray eels

crown of thorns seastar - these guys are BAD!

after the class ended, pete and i headed to another group of islands in french polynesia called the tuamotus. the tuamotus are all atolls compared to the high standing islands in the society island chain (moorea, tahiti, etc.). our first island was fakarava - a sleepy little atoll known exclusively for it's amazing diving. the first day we were there we were fortunate to get on a dive trip to the south pass of the atoll. it is a trip that dive shops do rarely because it is 60kms from their base. the first photo below was taken from that pass...the sharks were AMAZING! there are also no crown-t0-thorns on the atolls, so the live coral cover was incredible. the fish were also more numerous and bigger than anything we saw in moorea. almost all of the dives we did were drift dives through the passes of the atolls. these dives are neat because the current creates congregations of fish and as a result their predators. we would start our dives in blue water where we would see lots of pelagic species and then drift in over the reef and see those species. the current was so fast some days that i felt like superman underwater...we were flying and there was no stopping! we would eventually drop down into a bowl while the current continued overhead. this bowl, called ali baba, was filled with thousands of fish doing the same thing we were...escaping the current.
we had six days on fakarava. we would usually dive in the morning and then take our bikes (provided by our pension) and find someplace to snorkel. we spent our evenings playing cards (loser had to do dishes) and pouring over the fish field guide to figure out which new species we had seen during the day.

fakarava sharks!

goat fish in ali baba - hundreds of them!

live coral

mode of transportation

after fakarava, we headed to rangiroa for a day. we were met at the airport by a dive operator that our fakarava dive outfit had arranged. jean-jacques wrote down what gear we needed and picked us up in the boat at our pension 30 minutes later. it worked out brilliantly! we did two dives in rangiroa - similar drift dives to fakarava, but slightly different. the pass is a lot deeper in rangiroa so we were not as close to the bottom there. we did see lots of different species - turtles, eagle rays, and our most prized fish of the tuamotus - the golden hawkfish! the hawkfish is one of mine and pete's favorites and the golden species is only found in the tuamotus. we had both been looking for it since we arrived and had had no luck. i spotted one in the last ten minutes of our first dive in rangiroa...we were so excited! (we know we're nerds)

school of barracudas

golden hawkfish - our prize fish

after our short stay on fakarava, we headed to our final destination of tikehau. tikehau is a tiny little place where we had nothing more planned than relaxing. our pension was on its own little island and we were picked up from the airport in a boat. the snorkeling in the lagoon was not very good, but the waves were small enough that we were able to cross the crest and snorkel on the outside of the atoll. the first day we snorkeled out there we swam out to the edge of the reef so we were in blue water. as soon as we arrived there, a whole mess of gray reef sharks starting coming up from the depths straight at us! it was slightly intimidating even though they were no bigger than i was. they started circling around pete...there were 22 of them! then a big school of barracudas came in and started following us around. the site was also hawkfish central, so we checked off another two species we had not seen before. tikehau definitely fit the bill of relaxation...

tikehau intertidal

while we were in moorea, pete was offered a job with the US Geological Survey in santa cruz. after days of deliberation, he decided to take the job. his last day at the university will be january 2nd. he is excited for the new challenges his new position (marine engineer) will bring but is sad to be leaving the university after ten years.

the next six months will be busy for me as well. i am hoping to finish my phd by june 2009 and am actively writing grants and applying for post-docs in the bay area. keep your fingers crossed!

cassie turned eleven last week and is as spunky as ever. she was really excited when i came home, and i am so happy to have her around me again.

my niece madeline turns ten tomorrow and is giving her leukemia a run for it's money. her perseverance and unwavering attitude have been amazing to watch. all signs point to her treatments working well and her body fighting the cancer cells with avengence. she's been able to keep up with her school work and was able to go to a full week of school before the break started.

we're off to oakland to spend christmas with pete's family. wishing you a lovely holiday and best wishes for 2009!

madeline elli

my 9-year old niece madeline was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia this week. she is a trooper and is taking the news with grace. the rest of us have much to learn from her! ALL is the most common form of childhood cancer and the treatment success rate is high. she started chemotherapy on wednesday and will continue on some sort of regiment or another for the next three years. she is back at home now with her two younger brothers...who i know will help to keep her spirits up while she's travelling down this uncertain and scary path.

i'll try to keep up with news on madeline here, but sarah has also set up a CaringBridge site at

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/madelinefoleywillcox

rats, housing, minnesota, seamonkeys, hawai'i, more rats, and a new nephew!

okay. time for the whirlwind update! cass hasn't run away again, but she has been running...after rats! that's right folks, we have rats. in our house. in the kitchen. in the toilet. everywhere. we were evicted from our house under suspicious conditions, but whatever. they can have the rats! i'm less than excited about having to find a new place in this overpriced dog unfriendly town. i'm having a dilemma of which is worse...craigslist posts or rats. hmm. i'll get back to you on that one.

pete and i managed to get a trip in to the river in early august. we had a great few days up there enjoying the warm weather and icy cold river. then i turned 30 while we ushered for the shakespeare santa cruz production of romeo and juliet. a few days later pete used his newly appointed reverend status to marry our dear friends morgan and tish.

reverend pete w/ tish and morgan

the next stop was minnesota. pete accompanied me for a few days to my home state. the last time he was there was in january 2007...it was 100 degrees warmer this trip! we got to spend some quality time with my parents, my niece madeline, and my grandpa. pete kicked all our butts at fishing and finally got to try the infamous tator tot hotdish (which i despise!).

pete with one of his SIX northerns

we put pete on a plane back to california so he could prep for his upcoming scientific diving class and i got in a van with four of my fellow seamonkeys and drove to wisconsin. twelve of us then commenced to run 206 miles from lacrosse, wi, to minneapolis, mn. clyde (the monkey below) has been our trusty mascot since we started punishing ourselves with these relays in 2003. we had a good time, slept little, and were sore by the time we finished. stairs were not so much fun on sunday morning!

clyde, our trusty monkey

after a surprise 60th birthday party for my parents, i was on a plane heading for honolulu. i attended a conference on stable isotopes in ecology and presented some of the work i've been doing for the last four years. the talk went well, i met some great people, and honolulu wasn't bad either. after the conference ended, i flew to kaua'i for a few days of hiking and diving. i got to stay with my friends chris and lee who showed me around and took me diving. it was great! i have to admit that i wasn't thinking about rats, housing, or my dissertation. it was wonderful...

waimea canyon, kaua'i

green sea turtle, hanauma bay, o'ahu

and finally, today at 7:58am, i got a new nephew. baby luke and mom (sarah) are doing well. madeline and kieran have been anxiously awaiting his arrival so i'm sure they're excited too. i'm sad i missed meeting him by a week.

stephanie, madeline (9), and kieran (2)

there's the whirlwind. i hope september holds better things than august...

fireworks suck!

i think that it is safe to say that whoever invented the firework and all of its subsequent forms never owned a dog. it was a rough weekend for cass (and me!). i have the best neighbors in the world...they love blowing up m-80s and other ridiculously loud things from dark until 3am. on the 3rd i came home from work and cass was so terrified she wouldn't even come out of the bush for me. her muscles had been trembling for so long that she could hardly walk and her pupils were dilated so much that their was only a thin sliver of iris was visible. fortunately, pete's house is much quieter and i was able to get her into the car and over to his house for the next two days. thinking that my neighbors would have blown up all their fireworks on the 4th, i brought cass back home on the 5th. things were fine while i was here, but i had to go to the monterey bay aquarium to volunteer for a sleep-over. i got a call from pete at 11:45pm saying that cass was gone. apparently the fireworks were not finished. in her frantic state, cass either jumped a 4.5 foot fence or shimmied her body through a 6-inch hole under the fence. fortunately, two girls saw her frantically running back and forth on a busy street and managed to catch her and take her home. once the animal services office opened on sunday, they were able to get my phone number and return the precious cargo. she's doing fine and is calmer than i expected. there might be some harsh words (or maybe just an illegal fireworks call to the police) if things start blowing up again tonight...


an update on the rest of the happenings for the last couple of months...
the class ended at the beginning of june after a field trip to the sierra nevada and one to big sur. it was a great class and it was both sad and a relief for it to end. i've signed myself up to ta another field class in the fall so it must not have been too horrible...or maybe it's just the fact that i get to spend four weeks in tahiti. :)

with the class commitment behind me, i am now fully buried in my data. it is exciting to be putting all of the research work together, but it is also a really frustrating process. i think this phd thing may make me lose my mind. i am trying to write two chapters before the end of september (read: this post=procrastination) so that i am on track to finish by next spring. it is going to be a lot of work, but i am in santa cruz for most of the summer which will help immensely.

there are some fun things to be done around here, though. a couple weekends ago pete and i went up to oakland for some family-reunion fun. it was the first time in twelve years that his mom's family was all together and i got to meet pete's cousins for the first time. we took a ferry across the bay to san francisco and spent the day on the embarcadero. i've never done all the touristy stuff down there so it was fun for me. last weekend pete and i went back up to the city for the symphony. we heard dvorzak's cello concerto...it was really good. it was our first time to the symphony in san fran, but i'm sure we'll go back. pete is now back up in the bay area for the next two weeks. he is taking his captain's license class (for boats) so that he is a more desirable candidate for jobs he may be applying for in the future.



at the end of june, pete suffered a loss in the motorcycle fleet in dramatic fashion. he was on his way to oakland for father's day/dad's bday/dad's retirement when all hell broke loose. he was on the interstate driving 75mph in the fast lane when he heard a horrible metallic noise and then the rear wheel of his bike locked up. miraculously he was able to keep the bike upright and off to the shoulder of the freeway. his engine block is cracked and there are some crazy broken parts on the inside. the engine only had 8,800 miles on it but unfortunately is outside of warranty coverage. he's bummed about the bike, but we're all thankful he isn't cracked too.

lastly in the update, it's been a rough year here for fires. there have been three in the immediate santa cruz area that have displaced friends (one w/ a five-day-old baby!) and destroyed so much. the big fire that is raging in big sur (basin complex fire) is currently burning through one of my field sites and is threatening the second. fortunately it may be beneficial for my research rather than a hindrance. my advisor pete and i are currently trying to find funding sources to study the effects of fire on watersheds and ultimately on marine communities. it is going to be sad to go back to big sur, though. it is a much loved and cherished spot for so many and it is going to be a long time before it returns to its previous state...

photos

here's the place to go if you want to peruse more photos of peru (and alaska). i'll try to get more photos up of other trips soon...

http://picasaweb.google.com/melissa.marie.foley

peru adventures

machu picchu in all her glory

waynu picchu (peak behind machu picchu) - yes, those stairs are over NOTHING!

we started our peru expedition in lima. i flew from santa cruz and pete came from chile after 8 weeks in the antarctic. it was great to be reunited! we flew to cusco right away and spent about a week in the highlands. the highlights were the incan historic sites that blanket that area (cusco was an incan stronghold in the mid 1400's) and of course our days spent at machu picchu. first impressions...the incans were CRAZY! we walked up so many stairs in two days and a disproportionate amount of those stairs were on the sides of cliffs. there was no evidence that they built anything on flat ground...it was all on the sides of really steep hills. imagine carrying a 300 tonne chunk of rock up the side of a cliff...at 12,000 feet. crazy but so impressive. the rock work they did was really amazing too. they shaped each stone to fit the previous one with incredible precision. there is a wall in cusco that you can run your hand across and not feel any of the seams in the rocks. neither of us had too many problems with the altitude, but i took aspirin every day and we both drank mate de coca or chewed coca leaves daily. i decided to be adventurous with the food there...we ate guinea pig the first night in cusco! imagine a whole guinea pig minus the fur on your plate...mmm, not something i need to eat again. i tried the alpaca too and that was much less exotic and much more cow-ish.

our next adventure was getting stuck in cusco for two days while the locals went on strike. there was no transportation in, out, or around the city and the airport was shut down for two days. we had a nice little trek to and from the airport with all our gear to find that out, but at least none of the rock throwing was directed at us. we holed up with some nuns for the two days and finally made our way to the jungle...

rain frog - tambopata rainforest reserve

hoatzin - once thought to be the link between archaeopteryx and modern birds

we made the short flight to puerto maldonado and were met by our jungle guide and a mototaxi (think rickshaw with a motorcycle). fortunately we were able to push our trip back two days due to the strike and still had the full four days of jungle time. we took a boat 4 hours up the tambopata river to the beautiful wasai lodge. our tour consisted only of pete and me and one other guy from louisiana. jorge (our guide) was amazing. he could find things that we would never have seen and his knowledge of the plants and animals was incredible. we saw lots of birds, monkeys, bugs, frogs...all the normal jungle critters. the bugs were not bad at all and the food and accommodation up there were great.

we spent our last night in lima before flying home. we stayed in a great little place in mira flores (nicer part of lima) and had dinner overlooking a pre-incan site. that was pretty cool, but i wasn't all that impressed with lima at first sight and was happy to fly away the next morning. i'll try to post some more photos on a different website since there are way too many to put up here...

we've been back in the country for three weeks now and pete and i have been in the same town for five of those days. i was in orlando for a week for a scientific meeting and then pete went to san diego for a conference and then i went in the field... but i think we're in the same place for a few weeks now. i'm all moved into my new place and cass seems to really be enjoying it there. she has plenty of spots to nap in the sun or shade and the housemates love her.

i am ta-ing an intensive course spring quarter so i am trying to finish everything this week that i will not have time to do for the next 10 weeks. i kind of feel like a chicken with my head cut off completely losing all sense of balance in my life...and i have a feeling it will feel like this until i finish...

be well.

the great frozen tundra

my nephew kieran and his new train (made by his great-grandpa!)

i recently returned from a trip to the frozen tundra that is minnesota. it never seems to fail that it is really, really cold whenever i go home...january, may, august...it doesn't matter. the day i flew in it was -5F. when i woke up the next morning it was -25F. let's just say i didn't venture out of my parent's house very much. the trip home was to celebrate our annual belated-christmas get together. almost everyone (we missed you david and pete!) was able to make the trek and it was great to spend a few days with my whole family. my nephew is 20 months and has changed so much since i saw him in june. he babbles up a storm and RUNS everywhere. i don't think walk is really in his vocabulary. my niece is 9 years old and nearly as tall as me. i am having a hard time believing that she is a third grader. everyone else in the family is doing well and the three black labs (ages 6 months, 18 months, and 10 years - cass's sister) kept everyone entertained. on our way back to minneapolis for my flight, i got to have lunch with my dear friend tenley and play with steian for a bit. my flights back to california made for a good adventure...it's a bummer when the landing gear is problematic and you're in the air... hmm.

brother matt and niece madeline

back on the home front there is good news. i have a more than temporary place to live! i don't move in until march 1st but at least i don't have to look anymore. for the time being i am staying with friends mark and jen. they are really wonderful people and i feel so grateful that cass and i are able to be here.
my peru trip is fast approaching which means that i will get to see pete soon. i feel like a little kid at christmas these days...i can hardly wait. as soon as we get back to the states we start our separate travel schedules again so i am really thankful that we will have two weeks together before we are apart for another three weeks.

a new year...

happy new year, everyone! it has been a busy month here. at the beginning of december pete's parents took us and his sister to cirque du soleil (kooza!) in san francisco for christmas. this was the first show for pete and i and it was amazing! we were in the front row...which means we were messed with my the performers a bit and had a little sweat flung our way, but had incredible seats. there was a woman who could lay on her stomach and walk her feet all the way around her head. go ahead...try that one at home!
the day after that outing i headed up to corvallis, oregon, for a conference. The conference was put on by PISCO, which included researchers from 4 west coast schools. since i have either worked or studied with that group for the last 10 years, it was great to see so many wonderful people. i also got to catch up with some friends who are still in corvallis, which was great.
as soon as i got back from oregon, pete and i took a short weekend and went to yosemite. we did some hiking and a bit of snowshoeing but missed the big snows by a couple of days. we stayed at a really cool little resort outside the park that cooked great food and had a wonderful sauna/hot tub facility.


and then...i had to move...to nowhere. after 7 weeks of searching, cassie and i are still homeless. i have been able to stay in pete's room since he is away, but it is not a long term solution because cassie is not supposed to be here. cass is utterly confused, but has been a champion of going with the flow. the longest we have been in one place since the 21st is three days. being settled would be lovely... i have to tell you all this because it paints a beautiful picture of what house searching has been like. a couple weeks ago i had two days of searching that set the bar at a new level. day 1 - living with a 50 year old man and his 78 year old mother. i am sure they are really nice people but...psycho anyone?? day 2 - bitten by chihuahua in the morning and dinner with a registered sex-offender in the evening. cool, eh?
christmas was wonderful. we spent three days with pete's family in oakland. we had family friend christmas, immediate family christmas, and extended family christmas. it was nice to relax for a few days and forget about housing and everything else for a bit. unfortunately for me, pete had to get on a plane in the early morning on the 26th. he is now sailing the seas around antarctica in his yearly gig as a marine technician for the u.s. antarctic program. he'll be there until mid-february and then we'll meet in peru for a two week adventure. his absence is especially felt this year as it feels like the only stability in my life is now thousands of miles away. however, as friends continue to trickle back into town from the holidays my days get a little brighter.
i hope all of you enjoyed family and friends over the holidays!