Today was even better than yesterday. The diving was better, and I just felt stronger all around. We woke up around 7 again and headed to breakfast in the office at guavaberry. We had bagels and jam as well as some delicious and monstrous glazed donuts. After breakfast, Marine 1 headed down the road to the baths. According to Caitlin, the lesser known reason why the baths are called the baths is that slave ships originally showered their slaves there before bringing them to market. I found it morbid, but it was an interesting bit of history.
Walking through the baths involved a lot of climbing, so it was a nice change of pace.
This picture is of “the cathedral”, one of the best locations in the baths. After making it to the beach, we walked out into the ocean and put on our snorkeling gear. Then we started swimming our way back to guavaberry. The water clarity was even better than yesterday. As we swam, Caitlin had us identify fish so that we could get some practice. I noticed an abundance of blue tangs as well as goatfish.
photo credit: Suarez. This is a picture of a group of blue tang. They are right in the middle of the picture.I found it funny how the goat fish always seem to be digging in the dirt because whenever they did, other fish would swarm around them trying to get the scraps of whatever food they picked up. After about an hour of swimming we reached the guavaberry beach and got out of the water for lunch.
For lunch, we had turkey sandwiches and chips while sitting on the beach. We even got a desert of M&Ms, which were really tasty because they had been chilled. After lunch we did more fish identification work on land and then headed back up to the road to get in the taxi. When the taxi picked us up, it brought us to the marina to go for another dive. Today we were on the sea monkey, which is larger than the boat we were on yesterday. It had an upper deck on it, but literally the second I got up there the wind knocked my hat off because it was so windy on the top of the boat.
Our dive site today was “wall to wall” of the coast of west dog island, named because explorers, upon arriving at the island, thought that they heard dogs barking; However, when they actually got close up found that it was seals, but for some reason they still named the island “west dog”. The dive site itself is named “wall to wall” because there are fish from “wall to wall.” The name held true as we descended into the water. Literally fish were everywhere, swimming between the coral. During this dive, our goal was also to identify fish species. By far the most abundant fish on this dive was the “sergeant major”, a type of damselfish. As far as the most interesting fish I saw, it had to be the grey angelfish. It was much larger than I was expecting but seemed to just flow through the water smoothly. Today was also the first day that I saw a lionfish, which my group actually saw two today. They were very slow moving, however I think that they were hunting and trying to avoid being seen. Over all, today’s dive went much better than yesterday’s because my mask was perfectly clear and I was able to equalize my ears much easier.
Once we got out of the water, we went back to the marina and got back in the taxi to head to guavaberry. Like yesterday, we were given time to shower and then headed back to mad dogs. Today, dinner was an assortment of wraps along with potato salad and pasta. The wraps were particularly tasty.
After dinner Casey gave a presentation on the coral transplanting from last year. It was interesting to find out which techniques worked and which didn’t. It’s also going to be really awesome this year because we are placing the corals onto artificial reefs that Marine 2 designs and creates. I’m really looking forward to it.
