What day is it today? Is it a weekend? Weekday?
I dunno! All I know is that I’ve very much settled into the “island time” that reigns here. My life now moves at a slow, syrupy pace as one day slides easily into the next.
I have been on Christmas Island for three weeks, and somewhere in that time-syrup, I’ve lost track of the Week 2 update (whoops!), so I’ll just roll updates from the past two weeks into one big update here!
Let’s get started!!
Acclimation Aggravations
We left off with me preparing to acclimate my Discoplax celeste (Christmas Island Blue) crabs to my laboratory conditions. During the acclimation week, my crabs were supposed to be kept individually in 10qt buckets along with enough water to prevent any sort of dehydration stress, and my job was to change their water every day. Seems a simple enough task, right?

This wasn’t even its final form! I definitely added more rocks and mesh and rubber bands in order to keep the crabs from escaping.
Wrong! Not long after getting the crabs into the lab, drama unfolded!
Apparently, the larger crabs could escape! Somehow, from being seated at the bottom of the buckets, they could still latch what is essentially their toes onto the lip of the bucket and pull the rest of their body out. I tried everything to keep them contained: fiberglass mesh, rubber bands, heavy metal grids, duct tape, zipties, stones (this potential solution was the most interesting to see them overcome — the crabs were strong enough to not only tear apart the mesh and pull themselves out of the buckets from beneath a heavy metal grid, they were able to still do all this from beneath a stone several times their body weight). I was honestly amazed by how crafty these crabs were, but I was mostly annoyed. #fieldworkfail

This is DC01 after his fifth escape. He’s covered in cobwebs and dustbunnies from hiding out in the storeroom. #foreverontherun His name is Houdini now.
Their escapades were a big problem for my project because I couldn’t really begin acclimating the crabs to prepare them for the experiment if they flew the coop every night — what’s most important for the acclimation period is making sure all the crabs are kept in the same environment for the full length of time. So every time a crab escaped, I had to restart the clock.
Eventually, by combining all the methods and double-mesh-wrapping the especially problematic crabs (here’s looking at you, DC01 and DC11…), I was able to keep them all contained. And with that problem out of the way, I was able to begin my experiment in earnest!
Crab Catching!
While my blue crabs were acclimating, I went out in search of some of the other species I wanted to collect for my project. Specifically, I wanted to catch nipper crabs: the little nipper (Geograpsus grayi) and the yellow nipper (Geograpsus crinipes).
I heard from the Park Rangers that the little nippers were sort of difficult to find — they were essentially all over the island, but no one place in particular, and I had to be a bit lucky to find one. I had seen only one unexpectedly while catching my blues, and the little crab skittered deep into a tree trunk before I even got my crab-catching gloves on.
One morning when I was driving down to The Settlement to get roti canai and curry (did I mention I love roti canai and curry? ‘Cause I do, I really really do!), I saw a dark little crab body dart into the road. Since I was driving sort of fast, I only had a fraction of a second to 1) realize that it was a crab and not some leaf litter blowing into the road, 2) swerve out of the way to avoid crushing the little creature beneath the wheels of my RAV4, and 3) identify the crab in question.
I pulled to a quick stop, turned my car around, and drove back to where I thought I saw the crab as I was driving. Luckily, the little guy didn’t run too far away, and I was able to easily scoop him up in my bucket. Fieldwork victory~

It was a stroke of luck that I found this little crab.
I found the yellow nipper also by accident. I had gone to Ethel Beach and Lily Beach in search of ghost crabs, but had come up empty. Since I wasn’t in the give-up-and-throw-in-the-towel mood that day, I decided to scan the rocky walls at Lily Beach in greater depth to try to search for the crabs. Since the tide was coming in, I had to be a bit careful — the water would be at my ankles one minute and the next, a wave would bring it up to my waist or higher — so I actually began scaling the wall to both look for the crab and also to avoid taking an early morning dip in the sea.
That’s when I saw it! A palm-sized, egg-yolk yellow crab was tucked into a nook in the rock wall. He was perfect, exactly what I was looking for in a crab, but I knew he wasn’t going to be easy to extract. For one, these crabs are called “nippers” for a reason: they may be little, but their pinches are mighty! The nook he was in was also too narrow for me to try to grab him with my gloves on, so I knew I might be risking getting my fingers pinched if I went after him. On top of that, I was about four feet off the ground, clinging to the craggy rock face as the tide was coming in swiftly below me — If I wanted to avoid falling, I knew I would have to try to get to him with one hand.
Challenge accepted!
After about a 15 minute tussle with the little slugger where I used small pebbles to push him to a more open area of the nook, I was finally able to get him to run out. On his way past, he gave me a god-awful pinch and left his pinching claw attached to my finger as he dropped down into the surf below.
After throwing out a few expletives in pain, I climbed down from my perch, grabbed my handy bucket, and scooped him up. We both walked away from the encounter a little battered…he might’ve lost a claw, but the little slugger certainly gave as good as he got!

After a fierce battle, I finally got him! Those little claws definitely pack a punch!
ASIDE: These two beaches are absolutely stunning! I don’t think they’d be fun to swim in since the waves are very wild and the rocks near the shore are sharp and scary, but they’re lovely for walking along. I took some videos but I can’t seem to upload them to the blog directly — I’ll look into hosting them on Youtube first!
Happy RNAseq Sampling Day 1!
Every day that I have to take tissue samples, I greet my partner with this phrase. Sometimes, he even says it first, adjusting the number to correspond with whatever time point I’m sampling that day. Cute!
At any rate, I was excited and very nervous about sampling the first set of crabs. Would I be able to work quickly enough to avoid degrading the RNA? How long would it take to sample all the tissues? Would it be too late in the day by the time I started on the last crab of the batch? I tried my best to push those concerns to the side as I started on my first dissection at noon.
I ran into a few interesting issues: 1) the tissues all seemed to respond unexpectedly to the RNA stabilization solution I put them into, and I had to figure out how to grind them up without splashing the solution everywhere; 2) the crabs have a single gill that’s oriented in a way that I’ve never seen in any other crab before, so I had to figure out how to count that odd gill along with the regular ones; and 3) each dissection took about 45 minutes, so processing four crabs from start to finish, with very short breaks, ended up taking about 4 hours, which I didn’t anticipate or plan for (I couldn’t stop for lunch! Oh, the agony!!).
The first sampling day was definitely a learning experience, and I’ve since updated my sampling protocol to improve my efficiency and safety, but I suppose that’s what science and field research is all about: being adaptable and learning and improving yourself along the way. My RNAseq sampling days since the first one have all gone smoothly since then, which feels really fantastic. Woohoo!!

Look, Ma! I’m science-ing!
Adventuring to New Field Sites
Since I have a staggered sampling schedule, occasionally I get the day “off”. And, no, that doesn’t mean I get to sit home all day in my jammies binging on “Japanese Style Originator” or Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” on Netflix, as I tended to do on my days off back in my regular life. Instead, in the field, my “days off” are actually adventuring days! Since I’m forever looking for a few elusive crab species, on my days off, I pick a new site I want to explore, let a ranger know where I’m headed, and go out into the field for the day!

Having the Garmin satellite communicator has made me feel so safe while on the island. From the middle of a forest, I can text my partner, tease my siblings, and update the Rangers on my status — what a time to be alive!
In Search of Water: Ross Hill Gardens
On my first day off, I wanted to try to find a closer site to collect freshwater from. The site I was going to before was just a little bit too far away, and my water collection trips would take an hour and a half each morning, which is much too long! So to solve this, I went up to my massive Christmas Island map, which I have mounted on my wall, and looked all over for a “spring” icon somewhere near a road. To my great fortune, I was able to find one on the map that was much closer (Ross Hill Gardens; about a 5 minute drive away), so on my day off I set out to find it!
Luckily for me, since small parts of the stream were flowing out of the forest and pooling on the dirt road, I was able to find the site very easily. And when I went into the forest to find a place with high enough flow to fill my containers, I found an ideal collection site about 180 paces in. Perfection!
Discoveries and Disasters at Dolly Beach
On my next day off, a trip to Dolly Beach was on the menu! Dolly Beach is a real trek to get to: you have to use 4WD to drive down (and back up!) two very steep and treacherous hills, and then after that, you still need to walk through the forest for about 50 minutes to get to the beach itself. And although there’s a boardwalk for most of the walk to the beach, it isn’t well maintained at all and has lots of sections that are true trip hazards. Since my first day here when I expressed my interest in going to Dolly Beach to look for crabs (one of my rare species was last collected here!), the rangers have been warning me about the trip — the road down is very steep, and when it rains, it’s impossible for a car like a RAV4 to get back up, and also, the RAV4 engine might not be powerful enough to survive the trek, even on a dry day.
For these and other reasons, I’ve been very hesitant about going, and I definitely didn’t want to go on my own just in case something went south with the car. But one of my new friends here was volunteering for the annual Bird and Nature Week, which brings folks from all over Australia and the East Pacific to Christmas Island to partake in all its natural splendors, and she invited me on one of their tours to Dolly Beach! I excitedly agreed, and also agreed to serve as a “crab tour guide” for the group, so on the morning of, I met everyone on the trail to Dolly and we started walking over.
It was so fun to share my knowledge of crabs with everyone and to talk with the other tour guides about different projects that have happened on the island related to assessing crab biodiversity and population sizes. I also got to see my first female coconut crab as we walked to the beach! Every robber crab I’ve seen so far has been male.
Once we got to the beach, I looked around and definitely felt that it was worth the hike. It was lovely. Very Robinson Crusoe. And it put me in the mind of the island on the TV series, Lost — it was very isolated and it felt that way. But the waters were a sparkling aquamarine, the receding tide revealed small tidepools filled with tiny fishes, and freshwater from somewhere unseen streamed out of the forest and into the sea. So lovely. And there were also tracks on the sand from where mama sea turtles had laid their eggs!

Wilson…? WILSON!!! Dolly Beach definitely gave me that Tom Hanks in Castaway feeling.

This was pretty well-preserved, but we found another with half of the front of the shell still intact!

Dolly Beach at low tide

I could spend all day intertidaling here! I wonder what curiosities I would encounter!
After having a quick lunch and bopping around in the tidepools where I found a cuttlebone and a nearly completely intact nautilus shell, it was nearly time for us to head back. Just as we were turning around, someone yelled something about crabs running into the ocean, and when we looked around, we saw that they actually weren’t crabs at all. They were baby sea turtles!!!

SO FLUFFIN’ CUTE!!! My voice went up like seven octaves the whole time the turtles were on the beach. I couldn’t handle all the cuteness~

Turtle fingers!
We ran like children to watch the cute little turtles run towards the sea, their flippers awkward and adorable on the golden sand. Some were going the wrong way, so we lifted them up and placed them into the shallows — it was amazing how much better they were at swimming than running! We also went back to their nest and rescued a few stragglers that had gotten caught in the fallen debris and scared away a nearby coconut crab that looked to be eyeing the turtles for lunch. And then once all the turtles were safe at sea, we walked the 50 minutes back to the cars.
Since I had space in my car for a few others, a Singaporean couple and I began the difficult drive up the steep hills. My car seemed to handle it well, but once we reached the top, there was smoke coming out from under the hood. Uh-oh…
Once all the cars had ascended, we kept driving out of the forest towards the main road and the car seemed to be fine. But then, all of a sudden, it didn’t, and it seemed to be working very hard to maintain a normal speed. In quick succession, the check engine light came on, the car smelled like it was burning, and the entire jalopy ground to a halt and couldn’t be restarted. #ded
Fortunately, me and the Singaporean couple were able to hop into one of the other cars from the tour, and we left Goldie sitting on the side of the road. Later that day, I had to call the car rental company to retrieve the dead car, and they also gave me access to another vehicle, so all’s well that ends well, I suppose!
Back at the Pink House Research Station, the tour group got to wander around and talk to me and the other researchers about our projects — it was so great to see how excited people were about my research! Yay #scicomm! It made me really exited for the “Meet the Researcher” night that we’re having tomorrow for everyone in the Christmas Island community!
Taking it Easy
All work and no play makes Vicky a dull girl…
or so I’m told.
These past two weeks I’ve finally had the opportunity to just enjoy the island. I’ve gotten to eat more local foods (Lucky Ho’s is my new favorite restaurant, and it isn’t just because it’s colorful, although that was a huge influence on my deciding to visit in the first place), go to my first outdoor movie on the island (I watched Baby Driver; bad movie, but the outdoor cinema didn’t feel outdoors at all!), and go snorkeling with my new friend in Flying Fish Cove.

Beautiful banister outside of Lucky Ho’s. Their Chinese food is so delicious!

Outdoor Cinema before the show started. The audio quality was surprisingly great!
I think I really fell in love with the uniqueness and the beauty of the island when I went snorkeling that day. It was late afternoon, sometime near the golden hour, and my friend and I were swimming in these glorious turquoise waters over a stunning coral reef. At some point, I heard a sound like a song from the surface, so I lifted my head out of the water and listened to the eerily beautiful afternoon call-to-prayer emanating from the town mosque. In that moment, I looked around me at the shifting afternoon skies, the blue-green infinity beneath me, and the verdant rainforest climbing recklessly up the side of the golden limestone cliffs of the island and I felt something move inside of me. While feasting on that sensual smorgasbord, I felt the magic of this island, and I felt gratitude welling up inside of me that I had been given the opportunity to experience a place so special.
I can’t believe this is really my job!

Flying Fish Cove, Christmas Island. This color palette makes my eyes very happy!

The water was so clear and so turquoise. It was absolutely stunning!
-Vicky



In the morning, I met my new friend for breakfast and we had a surprisingly effective conversation — she spoke to me in English and I responded to her in Japanese. We knew just enough of each others’ mother tongues for us to discuss things like hometowns, places we want to see in the world, jobs, pets, and family. I felt so happy when I was able to use my broken Japanese to describe my research to her — she seemed genuinely interested in my work on the land crabs!

























It’s so gratifying to be able to carry out simple conversations with people in Japanese! One conversation that stood out for me from the hike was one I had with a 74-year old man who owns a dumpling shop in Tsumago. He told me (all in Japanese) that he and his family had lived in the area for many years and that he doesn’t often see women walking the trail alone (he said he’d only seen about 4, including me, this whole week!). He said he thought he was too old to learn English now, but that my Japanese was very good (spoiler alert: it kinda isn’t, but the Japanese are very kind). I told him about my family and hometown, where I go to school, my plans while I’m in Japan, and what I thought of the trail. It was so fun! I can understand a lot more than I can say (I found myself laughing out loud after overhearing a group of school girls tell jokes to each other on the trail), but I’m challenging myself to speak Japanese as often as possible so I can get better!



















For the next two weeks, I have the privilege of participating in a data intensive bioinformatics training workshop at UC Davis called