Today we woke up and pretty immediately made our way down to the Internet cafe for a breakfast of massive donuts and an introduction to turtle snagging from Dr. Gore. We learned about their migration patterns as well as some of the history of “turtleology” (I’m told that’s the technical term). After that, the group split up into our two boat sections, Sea Monkey and Sea Dragon, with Sea Monkey snorkeling first and Sea Dragon catching the turtles first, then we switch. The snorkel was pretty interesting, we saw mostly invertebrate species including various sea urchins, slugs, sea eggs, and mermaids eyeballs (unfortunately, we didnt catch the rest of her). After the snorkel, we headed back to the marina for burgers and fries, where Dylan, Chandler, and I picked the encyclopedic brain of Caitlin for about twenty minutes before boarding the boat and heading out to sea to catch some turtles. Sailing out, we knew that we had to surpass the other group’s whopping total of zero turtles, a very difficult endeavor. To catch them, we first had to spot them, which was really fun. Four to six of us would hang on to lines out the back of the boat and try to spot them at the bottom of the ocean. That was quite difficult, but not nearly as hard or terrifying as using the restroom on the boat. My group didn’t find any with the first ride, but within 30 seconds of jumping in, someone spotted one. We chased it for a while until it went too far out to sea where we couldn’t free dive to get it. At this point, Jeff called the chase off in favor of another turtle closer to shore; however no one told me that so I tracked it all the way out past the boat and into deeper ocean. When I realized I was alone, I had to forgo the turtle, as if I was going to free dive 50 feet and get it, and turn around, swimming furiously to catch the group, as they were swimming further and further away from me. Eventually we caught one, brought it aboard, named it Chad, and all took pictures with it. I wanted to lift it like the Stanley Cup and kiss it, but I didn’t want to drop it so in a close decision, I elected not to. We measured it and tagged it with a little bar code scanner device in its lower neck/fin area so that other programs can track it when they catch it. When we got back to the marina, we headed back to the rooms, took showers, then hit Mad Dogs for some baked ziti.
