Today we woke up at 7:30 and, like yesterday, we all gathered and left to eat breakfast. After breakfast, we had breathing exercises to test how long we could hold our breath in preparation for today’s activities. I wasn’t near the best of our group and I could only hold my breath for about 45 seconds, but we learned about a natural reaction where humans’ heart rates drop when in water in order to hold our breaths longer.
Anyway, our first main activity for the day was tagging, measuring, and recording sea turtles. A man from a company that records turtle activity in the area came and talked about what we would be doing. After that, we traveled to a nearby bay, which had a resort with a wide, empty beach. Once we docked we all started snorkeling in the shallow water. Looking at the reefs and the fish was amazing, but I didn’t see any turtles. After an hour or two we traveled back to the boat to tag the one turtle that a group had found. However, on the way back I noticed a 4 foot long Barracuda just floating in the shadows under our boat. I was about 10 feet away, but I continued to up the boat. After we scanned, measured, tagged and named the turtle, we thanked Joel, the turtle man, and headed back to the docks to eat lunch.
After I ate my grouper burger with Ben, Francis and Caesar we went back to the cabin to shower and prepare for our last activity, which was The Baths. The Baths were the name of a large group of massive boulders on the edge of the coast near our villas. They were interesting because they had several pockets and crevices that tourists could fit through, and inside were small “indoor” beaches. We learned about how they were made during the formation of the islands and how the volcanic gasses formed pockets in the large boulders that became exposed after centuries of erosion. Once we made it through the Baths, we entered the water and snorkeled around the rocks and the reefs to our resort’s beach. We snorkeled for over an hour and the water had some of the coolest formations I have ever seen. I swam under the underwater arches, saw another sea turtle and an eel, and I dodged a large number of jellyfish, which people had warned all of us about. Luckily, I came back without any stings.
Afterwards, we walked back to our cabin, showered, then left to eat at Maddogs, the restaurant up the street. Once there, we ate Mexican food and watched my group’s project video over whaling. Then, we came back down to the office-lounge place to write our blog entries. That was about it for day 2, and I’ll continue writing tomorrow.
Yesterday’s picture by Dr. Gruninger
Today’s picture by Mr. Kirby
