Today I woke up had breakfast and got on the boat for two dives. Today during the two dives I saw a plentiful amount of colorful fish swimming around the reef. I saw a trumpet fish today which was cool because of how weird of a fish it is. It is long and narrow and to blend in with its surroundings it goes perpendicular to the reef to try and look like a piece of coral. I also saw a moray eel, moray eels are cool because they get their green coloring from covering their whole body in mucus which can contain toxins. Moray eels are also the only fish to participate in collaborate hunting, the morays team up with groupers to hunt. The moray swims in a small space flushing out the fish and the grouper waits outside the hole and grabs the fish trying to escape. After the dives we all ate lunch and went to the turtle farm. It was cool to see all the turtles but also very sad because they had so little space to swim and there were so many of them. The saddest part though was the petting stations. In the petting stations none of the turtles wanted to be picked up; they would swim away from you and hide to try to not get picked up. It was obvious to tell, the turtles did not want to be there and wanted to be free out in the open ocean. Turtles travel far distances in their lifetime and being confined and a 30ft pin all their life is not enough space for them. After the depressing turtle farm we came back to Cobalt Coast and ate dinner. Then watched a little of The Bachelorette and geared up for a night snorkel. The night snorkel was amazing, I saw a bunch of fluorescent phytoplankton, a stingray, and a tarpon. The phytoplankton were like little tridents because they had a head and two arms in ninety degree angles the same direction as their head. There was a yellow stingray swimming about during the night snorkel which was cool to see cause stingrays are more active at night during the day. The highlight of the night snorkel was the tarpon, this tarpon was huge like 4 ft long and swam around us the whole time following the light and wound eat all the smaller fish the accidentally came in the light. I had never seen a wild tarpon before tonight so I was very happy to see one. I can’t wait to see the fish in tomorrow’s dives, especially the wall dive!
