Today the MantaWatch team split up to maximize our efforts.

Four of us worked in the classroom, entering four year’s of logbook data provided by Divine Diving. Each us took one year, but even so this job was harder than we imagined. There were more than 400 rows of data for each year! So we had to concentrate hard to make sure our data was typed correctly.

Meanwhile Dhanmo and Tami joined Blue Marlin to give a manta presentation to the guests, and to conduct a manta survey at the divesites of Karang Makassar, Batu Bolong and Tatawa Besar. They only found two mantas at Karang Makassar, but they did record other species in their logbooks. At Batu Bolong seven Napoleon wrasse and five whitetip reef sharks, and at Tatawa Besar two hawksbill turtles and three blacktip reef sharks! Good information to inform population distribution studies and support the implementation of West Manggarai manta and shark sanctuary.

In the evening we were still entering data when the others returned from the sea. Andy suddenly reminded us about this week’s exam. We thought he was joking, but we were wrong and the exam started at 6:15 pm. Andy warned us that we will be sent home if we fail, I hope he was joking this time!

We were very nervous, but in the end I think we finished well even though there were one or two questions that I found difficult to answer. I hope we get our results soon, and I’m looking forward to reviewing the answers together.

Working hard on our exam!