Today we woke up to a fierce storm unleashing itself on our half of the island. After a slightly wet breakfast we once again boarded our vessel for a new day of diving. In order to do this we had to take a short bus ride to a different dock as the dock at cobalt coast was unsafe to board from. This dock also put us a five minute boat ride from our first dive site, The Big Dipper. The Big Dipper consisted of several coral fingers that extended along a deep drop off leading us down to a max depth of 100 feet. As we cruised along our way back to the boat an excited Sam swam up to me and made our agreed upon Lionfish signal. This was exciting as Lionfish have been a rare find on this trip and this was my first one. As I approached it it looked almost like a coral due to its coloration, it was all black with white streaks dotting it’s body. As we learned from class the Lionfish is a master of lying in wait of prey, it is unmoving until an unfortunate fish swims too near to it. After our surface interval and a short boat ride we were back in the water at chain reef, named this due to a long anchor chain that stretches across it. At this dive site I was fortunate enough to see another trumpet fish this one however was much smaller, and was out swimming with other fish. My next spot was a god one as well and I saw a large grouper who was swimming with two other similar fish. The grouper swam into a cave right as I spotted it unfortunately. But just as we have learned this is a groupers normal behavior. After lunch we had a quick turnaround in order to go to the cayman turtle sanctuary. Here we were able to see large amounts of green and hawksbill sea turtles, and we were even able to pick up the juveniles in a touch tank. This was our final activity of the day, however tomorrow will be an exciting day involving a trip to stingray city.
