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USNS Mercy

The USNS Mercy, one of two hospital ships in service with the US Navy stopped in Guam this week. The ship was in port to pick up medical supplies and personal. There were several staff members from Naval Hospital Guam deploying on the Mercy this time. The Mercy will be conducting humanitarian aid missions throughout the region for the next four months. Its a pretty cool ship; at 900ft long its also a very big ship. I took a couple of pics of the ship while it was in port.

Pagat Cave

On Wednesday of last week, I volunteered to lead a Navy Spouses group to Pagat Cave in Northern Guam. I have been on the hike a few times, and its probably one of my favorites here on Guam. The cave is actually part of a huge sinkhole that dips below the Guam water lens. This feature gives you the opportunity to swim around in the crystal clear, cool water of the cave that has been naturally filtered by slowly seeping through the porous limestone. Pagat is also the location of an ancient Chamorro village and there are many artifacts scattered around the site including a set of Latte Stones and several Lusongs (grinding stones). The cave was the village's fresh water source. One of the coolest spots on Guam!

Underwater World

Last Thursday Jonathan's 1st grade class went on a field trip to Underwater World. Underwater World is as you can probably guess, a private aquarium here in Guam. It has one of those acrylic walk through tunnels that you get to look at all the fish through. It is pretty cool, there are six different types of sharks and some pretty big fish. The grouper in this picture is named "Lyle" and he probably weighs something around 350 lbs. He could probably swallow Jon Jon whole! Jon Jon got to touch some small sharks in the petting tanks and we had lunch at Sam Choy's afterwards.

Barracudas

On Friday, I went spearfishing with two friends Tim and Ken. We rented one of the Boston Whalers from the MWR and headed out about 0900 from the Sumay Cove Marina. We got to rent the Whaler with the new 175hp Evenrude E-tec motor; it was much better than renting the other boats with the old Johnson 140s. It goes twice as fast and the engine is much quieter. We zipped out to Magundas in no time. We got in the water and there was a little bit of a current, not too bad. It was slowly drifting us out towards the drop off. There we lots of nice sized parrot fish in about 40 feet of water, but they were very skittish. While I was coming up from trying to approach a parrot fish, I see a big fish coming at me midwater. At first I thought it was a big wahoo, but then it turned and I could tell it was a dogtooth tuna. I was on my way up, so I signaled Tim, and he took a dive on the fish. Tim fired a shot but missed. Dang, I was really hoping to put a second shot in the fish for Tim! Even though Tim had taken a shot at him, the doggy just hung around. I breathed up and dove again, the fish started swimming right towards me. I waited, aimed, and then took a shot. Bingo, right on target, I hit him right behind the gill plate. The shot didn't even phase the fish, he just went swimming right past me. To my dismay, I noticed that my shaft had barely penetrated the fish, I must have taken a longer shot than I thought. As soon as there was any pressure on the line, my shaft pulled and the dogtooth just leisurely swan away. By the time I got my gun reloaded, he was nowhere to be seen.

Shortly after the dogtooth, a school of medium sized great barracudas approached me. They swam under me as I dove on them. I picked out one of the bigger ones in the school and took a shot. I hit the fish in the top of the back; a crappy shot, but it held. Tim came over and gave me a second shot just in case my shaft tore out. Got the fish on the stringer and started heading towards the boat. Then Ken starts yelling for some help. Tim swims over to Ken and puts a second shot in another barracuda. Ken's barracuda is much bigger than mine. We put a lot of blood in the water with those two barracudas, so we decided to move to another spot. We moved North about 1/2 mile, but the spot wasn't very good, so after about 5 minutes, it was back in the boat and we decided to try along the breakwater rocks. Tim and Ken got in the water and I stayed in the boat. The current was kicking and in about 10 minutes, Ken and Tim were ready to get out. We made a stop at finger reef on our way back in, but didn't see anything worth shooting other than another big barracuda. We were back in at the dock at 1400. The two barracudas weighed 10.5 and 27 lbs. I sold the 10.5 lb one at the co-op, but the other was over 25 lbs so they couldn't buy it (any barracuda over 25 lbs has a high likelihood of ciguatera toxicity). One of the guys at the co-op said he would take it, so I gave it to him. Overall a great day on the water.

Guam made the national news today!

Seems that with such a close race for the democratic nomination, Guam's 8 democratic delegates were being hotly pursued by both Obama and Clinton. We've had a lot of political ads on the television and radio in the past few weeks. Its sort of weird that the US citizens of Guam cannot vote in the general election for the President of the United States, but their vote counts for deciding who can run for the presidency. Seems a little odd to me.

I guess there was really good voter turnout here in Guam (at least compared to what it normally is!).

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/03/guam.contest/index.html