Day 4

What a day! Im already ready to sleep as Im writing this post, but I wouldnt have it any other way! Spent the morning diving 2 different reefs and working with the class on their dive comfort.  This inluded working on buoyancy (very important for scientific diving) but also swimming around and checking out the sights. We were super lucky this morning and caught sight of barracuda, grouper, lobsters, a sunfish, an eagle ray, a sting ray, a sea turtle, and even a sea horse! It was a very eventful morning.

After our morning dives we pounded down lunch and relaxed a little, I took a walk on the beach.

Fan coral

Brain coral skeleton

Coral skeletons

Sand crab!

Green dragonfly

After my walk one of the resident scientists working on lionfish showed us how she measures and disects the fish she collects and told us a bit about lionfish and what they are doing to the reef (they are an invasive species). They are no good! They eat all the little fish even when they dont need to and are very destructive. Luckily many scientists and locals are removing lionfish as much as possible on reefs around them in order to minimize the damage.

Afterwards we went snorkeling right in the backyard of CCMI (which happens to be a marine protected area, so it is a sanctuary for the organisms there). We looked at many different coral species and started learning the ideantifications of each (genus and species) and also enjoyed looking at the reef fish and just swiming around taking in the beautiful day.

By the time we got back in we were all exhausted! We ate dinner and had a little pow wow about our day, and even learned about the insides of regulators and how to calculate our air consumption. by the end of that meeting everyone was ready for bed (including me). I spent a little time afterwards doing work now that it was quiet, but Im off to sleep! Another full day tomorrow and I cant wait to see what it has in store!!

- J