Late last night we did a night snorkel on the beach. I was not the biggest fan of the two previous snorkels but this one was so cool. We carried around led flashlights and snorkeled around the beach and I found so many cool things. A few of them were lobsters, jelly fish, squid and sting rays. The sting rays did the same exact thing at night as they do doing the day. But when we saw a squid I thought it was so cool. The dive instructor was touching it so I decided I would. It was so slimy and felt weird. I was very surprised how it was not shy at all. The lobster we saw was huge I did not get to get close to it because it was deep but it was very cool. The part that entertained me most on the snorkel were these little worms that were attracted to the light. I shined the light on my stomach and hundreds we just swarming in front of me. The worms would bite you but the bite tickled. The night snorkel was a great way to end an amazing day. After a late start to the day because we got to sleep in we went down to the marina for a briefing about turtle tagging. The guy that gave us the the briefing on what to do for turtle tagging was a government official and was head of turtle tagging in this area. He taught me much about what you can learn by tagging turtles. You can learn their migration patterns, if they have grown at all, and about their diet. He said some of the turtles he had tagged in this area have traveled as far as Nicaragua or Venezuela. My boat had the afternoon turtle tagging session so we went to savannah bay to learn about some of the invertebrates in this area. I learned many new things about sea urchins such as some you can in fact pick up it just matters on the size of their spikes. If their spikes are really long then you don’t mess with them. I also learned that sea slugs are both male and female and that they mate by rubbing their right sides together. We also learned about a sand crab they had never seen before and a fire worm. The sand crab loved to dig and hide in the sand. They called it the ninja crab because when it walked it looked like a ninja. The fire worm is very poisonous and has little spikes around it. We poked it with a fork to make it mad and when we did that it turned white in the area that we were poking at. The white areas are more spikes that come out when it feels threatened. Next we had a shirt snorkel on the beach. I saw a lobster but not for long because right when I saw it it when back to hiding. I only snorkels for about twenty minutes and I just looked around a small coral reef and saw many of the same fish I had seen before. Now after lunch on the beach it was off to turtle tagging. Joel was on the boat with us and before we started gave us a few more quick tips. It was teams of six and three on each side of the boat. We would grab onto a rope and it would drag us until we saw a turtle. My group was first and after about five or ten minutes of the boat hauling us around we saw a turtle. We swarmed it and then made a game plan. I was one of the two distractors. I went on the right side while another person went on the left side and we tried to distract to turtle while someone came from behind and grabbed it. It did not work, the turtle was so fast. We chased it for awhile and it finally got away. We got back on the boat and the next group went. The boat dragged them for forever and they never saw a turtle so we went to a different more shallow location where we would free dive and snorkel around for a turtle. Right when we got to the spot we saw many turtles so we jumped split into groups and it was off. We saw a turtle right when we got in and started to tail it. Right after we made our game plan we heard get back on the boat we got one. I was very disappointed but right when I got on the boat I was so excited. A huge hawksbill turtle was sitting right next to me and we checked to see if it was healthy. We measured the head, the shell, the fins, and we checked to see if there were damages on the shell. After that it was time to tag each front flipper. When he clipped the tag in the turtle started flapping around it seemed awful but the guy said it was abnormal reaction. After tagging and recording data we named it squirt. We set the turtle free and it sped away as fast as it could. This was a very cool experience and I hope I get to do it again.
