Today, I woke up on my own (I know your proud, Mom). My cabin mates and I headed to the office to eat, but then we realized it wasn’t there and ran back to the meeting place. We ate at the docks today, with donuts, cereal, yogurt, and coffee. After breakfast we headed to Salt Island, and we dove on the famous wreck of the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Rhone. The first dive was off of the the bow section of the Rhone (as it was split into two sections from the hurricane that sunk it). We hit 82 feet at the bottom, and we were down for 40 minutes. I was having problems using my BCD underwater, as I added a little bit of air but could not get the air out. I thought I was underweighted so I used a lot of air to use PPB. The disparity of life underwater was amazing though, when comparing the inside of the hull to the outside of the hull. The inside had lots of life, but the outside of the hull blew it away in terms of diversity. This is because the sun can nurture the outside of the hull and really can’t affect the inside of the hull. We also saw a barracuda and a sea turtle while down there. The second dive was much better once I figured out the problem with the BCD, and PPB really came in handy. The defog wore off so my goggles fogged up quite a bit, but visibility was still very good. We saw the stern section of the boat this time, and we saw a lot of fish, and the huge (15 foot radius) propeller. We saw more barracuda, sea turtles, and we also saw a cubera snapper, which, as Nick Byrne described, “it was basically a fat barracuda”. After we were done with the second dive, we headed over to Cooper Island to eat fish and chips at the Cooper Island Beach Club. Shout out to Jeff’s island accent that he showed us on the way to the island, it is fantastic and I thought he might sell me something illegal it was so realistic (kidding). After that we went snorkeling off of the coast and we saw more barracudas, some tarpons, blue tangs, parrotfish, and some goatfish. After that we headed back to the docks and back to the cabins early, while we waited for MB2. This was our last night at Mad Dogs and she made quesadillas, they were great. It was a heartfelt goodbye at the end, with Jeff Melsheimer leading the goodbye with a small impromptu speech. After that we headed to the office to write our blogs. I think we’re doing a three tank dive tomorrow, so that will be fun. Good night!
