This morning, we woke up bright and early at 5:50 and had a great breakfast! Around 7:45 or so, we boarded our dive boat, the Twin Sister, and headed out to our first dive site: School House.
I saw many interesting fish down there, especially a mahogany snapper. At first glance, the snapper looked like a lionfish, an invasive species, because of the set of spikes shooting out the top of the fish to ward off predators, so my dive partner, Luke, and I were a tad concerned. After further examination, however, we were able to deduce that it was a snapper. During the first dive, we were down there for roughly 40 minutes and reached a max depth 60ft. After our exhausting dive, we all retreated back to the Twin Sister for a 45 minute surface interval and to head over to our next dive site: Rainbow Reef.
Rainbow Reef was by far my favorite of the two. We navigated through trenches and stayed along the ‘mini- sea wall.” Rainbow Reef was originally named after the divers staked the place, and they noticed that there was a multitude of rainbow parrotfish that hung out there. During our dive, we went down to around 60ft and saw many different fish. My favorite was a school of around 50 blue tangs (we even saw a couple black durgon mixed throughout the school — click here for a video of a school of blue tangs). My favorite part was traveling underneath a rock arch. There were lobsters in there, but I did not get a chance to see them; however, I saw some long-spined sea urchins hiding in the crevices. Overall, the experience of traveling underneath the arch was still very cool. We circled back around and surfaced, all of us exhausted by the long morning.
On land, we had a great buffet-style lunch and a four hour rest period, we everyone relaxed. Most people took advantage of the time to take a nap, but Nash and I decided to watch three and a half episodes of Stranger Things on Netflix (we both started season 1 on the plane and finished season 1 today). Then we headed down to the dinner table for a surprise assignment: a debate over the benefits and downsides to Stingray City. We broke off into group to prepare for an hour. We convinced back at 6 to have a great dinner (I tried a snapper fish for the first time — I liked it, it had an interesting taste). Then, we went to have our discussion.
Our discussion was over the pros and cons of Stingray City. The affirmative sides main was port was the economic benefits of Stingray City, as it brings in millions of dollars annually. On the other side, the negative side talked more about the dependency the Stingrays have on the tourists because they come to us for food. On top of that, the sandbars are the stingrays natural habitat as well as breeding ground, so they will always come to the location. The end of the debate was more or less a tie, with no one really swayed in their opinion (I was neutral at the start and remained neutral throughout the debate). After our debate, we went back to either go to bed or hangout for a little bit. For more info on Stingray City, either to see what or looks like or more to visit, click here for the official website!
That wraps up today! Tomorrow we have a two tank dive in the morning, and, if the weather allows it, a visit to Stingray City. Stay tuned for more tomorrow.
As always, here are some photos from today:
~ Aidan Hoofard
