Another early morning for us started out with our dive site being a good ways from the resort which was nice as we got to see some of the rest of the islands shores. The west side of the island in which we have mainly occupied for the most part has very rocky shores that also consist of tide pools where crabs or the invasive green Asian mussel but the occasional stretch of sand is visible. As we cruised through the open water, Mr Marr pointed out into to the open ocean where a flying fish had just breached the water, a few of us watched it glide and then disappear back into blue. I’d never seen a flying fish in person and it was something I didn’t really realize how cool it was to see until I began writing this. I’d also did not know that flying fish inhabited the Caribbean but after looking into it I found out they inhabit as far south as Namibia in Africa to as far north as Massachusetts and mostly every warm part of the Atlantic. When we arrived to our dive site Lee, our dive master, told us that the cite was called Bonnie’s arch. The site was named after Bonnie Charles, a Cayman island legend who produced some of the first film and photos of ocean life around the island in the late 70’s and early 80’s. While at Bonnie’s arch I noticed a queen angelfish, queen angel fish are very distinctive as they tend to be pretty large and multiple colors varying from bright yellows to blue and even pinks. On our second dive site I didn’t see much and I used my air up relatively quickly, as I hovered around 6 feet I looked around to see if anything would be on the horizon I noticed a school of black durgon. After swimming past the durgon I noticed something moving along the surface, it appeared to be a jelly fish as it had what appeared to be its bell or head and long translucent strands coming from behind it appeared to be the tentacles. I swam around the “jellyfish” for a little to be wary if it actually was one but lasted found out it was just a plastic bag. This helped me realize just how easy it is for a turtle to become fooled by a plastic bag floating at the surface. To continue on the subject of turtles, we visited the turtle center a ways from the resort. At the center we where able to swim with the turtles in a lagoon and even pick up younger ones. It was a fun experiment but in the end I see why this centre has so much controversy, the fully grown and even medium sized turtle are kept in extremely confined spaces very unlike there natural open ocean habitat, many of the turtles look sick and the lagoon in which some of them were was covered in a dense blanket of algae, which didn’t add to the swaying of being pro turtle center. After getting back to from the turtle center we relaxed a little and had our debate about stingray city (will be discussed in tomorrow’s blog) and then headed down to dinner where we celebrated Matthew’s birthday with a cake that Joey had bought. A few hours after dinner we went on our night snorkel. At first we didn’t see much but we a group later spotted a yellow sting ray which camouflage very well with the sand and yellow coral, Later into the snorkel we saw a very large tarpon which followed us for a bit as tarpon are very attracted to light, our flashlights also made the reflective silver scales of the tarpon very clear underwater. At the end of the snorkel as all our lights began to turn off we where able to see the bioluminescent phytoplankton that would sort of drift onto your hands and arms, some of the group even saw shrimp feed off there arms as the plankton would rest on them. Overall it was a good day and I’m exited for stingray city tomorrow.
