Today I was woken up at 6:45 and promptly went and woke up my roommates Sean and Alex. We got ready and headed down to the front entrance where the taxi took us to breakfast at the same place. I ate eggs, bacon, and a bagel. We got about an hour and half long lecture from laura about the different kinds of fish and marine life we would see. We then went Savannah bay to snorkel around the reefs then ate lunch and hopped back in for about an hour. My luck from yesterday ran out an I got stung by a jellyfish but it didn’t really hurt that much. I saw some other fish as well as a bunch of long spine urchin. We ate a lunch of sandwiches. I had two peanut butter and jelly. After that we threw the frisbee around for a bit then got back in the water to snorkel around. We got out to find that Casey, the main instructor who I may or may not have mentioned in previous blogs, along with Laura went out to the reef and caught a crab, several types of urchins, a sea pearl, a jelly fish, a sea egg, and a lettuce worm. The crab was unique because if come is danger, it can fold its very thin legs upwards so all of its weight is on the bottom and simultaneously minimizes water resistance so it can fall into the reef quickly and escape. The sea egg is a bottom feeder that moves along the ground and eats things such as algae. The sea pearl is abut the size of a very large grape and is the single largest single felled organism on the planet. They roll around on the bottom of the ocean until they crack and then spawn more sea pearls. They are filled with fresh water. The lettuce worm is an organism that has disguised itself to look like the algae it feeds on. It does look like a tiny piece of lettuce. The jellyfish is a really cool. They things that sting are called nematocyst which are tiny particles in the tentacles that fire off an electric show when they come in contact with organic material. Only some types of jelly fish actually have poison in them. After this we went to a place off the dog islands called the chimney. It’s this place where two large walls come together to make an opening. The dog islands are named the dog islands because when the Spanish first arrived, they could hear barking so they assumed there were vicious dogs there and stayed clear. When they finally went to investigate, they discovered that these islands were home to the only warm water seal in the world. Sadly, they ate so many that they don’t exist anymore in this area. The name did stick though. We all swam through it, and when both Sean and I saw, through it, we each got pushed into fire coral by the heavy currents which is a coral that has a toxin in it that causes any surface it comes in contact with to burn. It was ok but usually there are no currents. Today was a fluke. After this we went to mass and I used my mad skills to do a reading from the book of Amos. The song books only had the words of the songs in them, so it was a bunch of teenage boys with one or two locals doing spoken word versions of the songs. After that we went to the beech by our cabins for some grilled food. I had a burger that was good and a third of a bratwurst that I shared with Alex and Sean. After a solid thirty minutes of hanging out, we put on casey’s wet suits and went for a night snorkel. She gave each of a flashlight so we could see. The wetsuit was so we would get stung by and jellyfish floating around the area. We only saw one and I was able to stay away from it. The coolest thing I saw on that dive was an octopus crawling around on the side of a big rock followed by an eel, and them finally, the tarpon, which are these big long fish that look like barracuda from a distance but once you get close, you can tell that it isn’t. All in all, I’m exhausted from a full day in the sun, and a little sun burnt. The person doing my back missed a couple spots. Attached is a picture of where we blog. Ok bye
