Today, we hit the water fast and went on two dives immediately after breakfast. On these dives, we kept slates with us so we could list the type and number of each fish we saw. Researchers can use these slates to help them keep track of the fish populations in a certain area. We dove The Chimney first, an intricate reef that had stacks of corals, forming walls on either side of each other, that also created crevice-like openings we could swim through. Here, we saw two new fish that we didn’t see on day one: a barracuda and a porcupine puffer fish. The porcupine fish was my personal favorite. It had huge eyes, a large body, and it reminded me of a bulldog. On the next dive, we traveled to Paul’s grotto where we saw another nurse shark, around two to three feet long, and several other fish, including trumpet fish, yellow tailed snapper, and fairy basslet. This was the deepest dive we had with our maximum depth being sixty feet. It was interesting diving this deep because as we rose, we became more buoyant as the pressure decreased and air filled into our buoyancy control devices. Following our dives, we ate lunch and traveled to Savannah Beach to snorkel. We snorkeled for around thirty minutes over reefs just offshore the beach, and I saw several slugs, urchins, and shrimp. Afterwards, we had a lesson on invertebrates and observed a few such as a starfish, a mollusk, and two sea urchins. During the lesson we learned how creatures like starfish and urchins have bodies that are split into five sections, and that a flamingo tongue slug basically wraps its tongue around its shell, an action which provides the orange-dotted pattern one sees on the shell. Next we had an hour to ourselves to either snorkel or relax on the beach. I chose to hang around the beach and take in the amazing tropical surroundings of the cove: mountains encircled the beach, boats floated in the distance, and the water peacefully floated onto the beach, absent of waves or any other disturbance. By the end of the day, I was exhausted but glad about the experiences I gained.
