I woke up this morning with sadness that our trip would be over soon. Our final two dives were today, finishing the trip with 13 new dives in my logbook. All of the dives that we have gotten to do this week have been incredible, and the two we did today were no exception. We got into a van and drove to the boats because of the high tide and choppy waters. After getting to the boat, we had a short 5 minute boat ride to our first dive. This dive was another wall dive and is now one of the top dives that I’ve ever done. Descending, I had no idea that it was a wall dive because there is no visible drop off. Once we reached the sandy bottom, we searched around for any new coral and fish, but it wasn’t until I stopped focusing on the reef as much that I noticed the giant sea turtle swimming through the middle of our group. This sea turtle was missing a rear fin and had a very long tail. It was almost unrecognizable from the rear, but It soon turned revealing its face. It had a rounded head and the distinctive two lines in between its eyes, the mark of a green sea turtle. We continued on swimming to look for anything else around the coral overhangs, but we found nothing out of the ordinary. Then Lucy, the dive master for the trip, told us to follow her in between two large coral heads in the direction of the wall. I only noticed the wall after entering a system of caves and tunnels that opened up to open water nearly 4000 feet deep. We swam around the edge of the wall and entered a new tunnel that was only a few feet wide and a few feet tall, just big enough to swim through. When we exited, we were back near the boat in a new sandy patch filled with garden eels. Our next dive was even closer to shore and was only about 40 feet deep. As we swam through the coral heads, we noticed that under the large overhangs, small fish would swim upside down due to the size of the overhang. This was weird to see because any of the larger fish would swim right side up, but small fish would be upside down until they left the cover of the overhang. Closer to the end of the dive I found a large conch slowly shooting along the sand. I watched it for a while, then said goodbye to the sea floor until next time. We boarded the boat and went back to the van where we said goodbye to the crew and headed back to the lodge for the final time.
