Today started out with an early wake up call from the chickens just down the way. It was just before six o’clock and both of my roommates were just waking up as well. We all sat out on our deck, that is much cooler than our rooms inside by the way, and just relaxed until we had to go down to catch our taxi to breakfast. After breakfast, we had a nice classroom session where we went over our schedule for the week and learned the different methods of harvesting and planting coral on the ocean reefs. Then, after a solid lunch, we headed down for our first dive of the trip. We entered the boat and went over all of the safety procedures before setting up our gear and heading on our way. This dive was solely for acclimating to the salt water and perfecting our buoyancy. Before we descended, I was only expecting to descend about 30 feet or so and see some small fish along the ocean floor. We ended up going close to 60 feet and seeing some Nassau groupers as well as a lobster and lion fish. Our dive instructor caught two of the lion fish and actually fed one to an eel right in front of us. It was an amazing experience just gliding a couple feet over the ocean floor and observing all of the fish and the coral. For dinner, we headed over to Mad Dog’s for their famous brisket pizza, played a little “get the ring on the hook,” and finished our log books for today’s diving. At the end of the day, it was time to relax and play a little poker. It’s 8:15 right now and we have to be back in our cabins by 10, but I’ll bet we all head back over before then to catch just that little bit of extra sleep. I can’t wait to get back on the water tomorrow and navigate some real reefs and see some even bigger fish.
