Day 23

Beautiful sunny morning today!! We got in the water first thing today to catch some of the morning sun and beat the afternoon wind. We headed to the south side and had a fun dive along the wall (all the tansects are complete!). It was nice to just play the whole dive and explore around with the class. Was a great dive and on the boat ride back we even saw flying fish! They are so cool!

Photo credit: Alex Matacchieri

Photo credit: Jenn Riling

On our way back in we stopped in the lagoon to collect conch for conch fritters later this week! We each snorkeled around and found the biggest conch we could find and kept the 10 biggest ones (the total catch we are allowed to have per day). Once we got back to CCMI we learned how to clean the conch and everyone who wanted to got to give it a go.

After lunch we had a little time to relax in the sun at the beach resort before starting in on the NITROX course (learning how to use high oxygen gas blends while diving). We will finish up the class tomorrow.

After dinner a couple of us decided it would be fun to go on a night snorkel since it was so calm out. It was really awesome!! We saw a squid (my favorite part) and corals with their polyps open (another one of my favorites), a balloon fish, a grouper, tons of lobster, and hundreds of tiny fish (which loved the dive lights and hung around the whole time). Hopefully it will stay calm enough for us to go on a night dive this week!

- J

Photo credit: Alex Matacchieri