JimH,
I'm not the Graham you met on Abaco, unfortunately. You were spot on about the science, though. The vast majority of people, when they find out that that I'm a marine biologist instantly assume that I spend most of my time chasing after cute, cuddly animals like whales, dolphins and seals (TV wildlife shows have a lot to answer for). While there has been a small element of that for me (all of these animals, but seals, in particular, are not so cute close up - they smell strongly of rotting fish and usually have sharp teeth or a very strong instinct to violently mate with anything). In reality, I'm often found out on an open boat in the middle of a snow storm sifting though lumps of mud collected after a 90 minute dive in a Scottish loch with water temperatures near freezing. That's the fun part! I then have to spend substantially more time (1) staring down a microscope till my eyes bleed, while trying to decipher a description written in some obscure foreign language of the hair on the 5th leg of a beastie that's no bigger than a very, very small flea. (2) coaxing my computer into doing ever more exotic and complicated statistical somersaults to explain what they're doing and why they're doing it (3) writing reports, papers and book chapters that are of interest to only three people in entire the world (until the animal you've studied is extinct, then, of course, everyone wants to know about it!).
OK, so there is an up side. I have had the privilege of working and diving in some of the most attractive and interesting parts of the world - a few entirely off-limits to tourists, and, yes, I guess that does easily make for the times when I have to wait over an hour for my fingers to warm up sufficiently to be able move them again.
Mouseman:
I'm at my work computer at the moment so don't have very many of my own (non-work) pictures, but something like this?
(images sent via email attachment - no idea how to place images on these pages).