October 31, 2002

Today has been a day of preparation - we've been finalizing official documents and permits, and expected (optimistically) to sail just after noon. We have had a day scouring Sorong for the last of the special supplies we need: 50 liters of alcohol for botanical specimens; batteries for the GPS units; copper wires for coral specimens; and the myriad of other things we won't see again until the boat docks again in Sorong on 22 November.

At midday the team boarded Pindito, and spent the afternoon around tables in the main cabin, locating sites for dives and for vegetation surveys. The first group meeting was held after dinner (delicious), when the survey goals and methods were discussed. Two languages are in use - English and Bahasa Indonesia - which means some time is taken up in translation. By the end of this trip everyone's language skills will have improved greatly.

Each team has been getting equipment ready, some as simple as Emre's printed plastic tags for corals, and some as complicated as Pawel's 50kg high definition underwater video camera, which looks like a sit-on torpedo and takes three men to carry. We've had a few hiccups in communications too, and have yet to get our computers talking to each other - so for today we've been unable to post any photographs.

Tomorrow morning we plan to weigh anchor for Salawati Island, and our first taste of the reefs and forests of the area, fingers crossed.