Today we woke up at 6:30 with the help of Bowen. We started to get ready and were greeted by Mr. Kirby at around 7:00 so that he could make sure we we up. Once we got down to the cattle guard we waited on everyone to come so that we could meet the manager, Tina. She gave us the rundown of the resort and told us the ground rules of the commissary. After that we went back to the main road and took a taxi bus thingy to the classroom where we met Casey, Sarah, and Jessica. They greeted us and introduced themselves and we had a breakfast of eggs bacon and bagels. After breakfast we were given a summary of what we would learn this week. Our first subject was whales and there captivity in sea world. We saw both sides of the spectrum of the argument when two students participated in a debate. One argued that captivity was in humane for such a large creature when it was exploited to do tricks for the viewers entertainment, while the other argued that it was the best way to make people want to try to conserve the species. Afterwards we made hats that were supposed to be sharks that made us look pretty awesome. The entire group learned about fish species and we played a lot of games to test our knowledge of these species. We then had sandwiches for lunch and took a taxi to the marina. The group that I was in boarded a boat called sea monkey and after we where told about the safety structures in the boat we set off for our first dive. We got to an island and hooked up to a mooring. They then explained to us the dive site and what we might see while looking in it. The islands name was dog island after the barking that was once heard by sailors. We all got in the water and began our descent. The first step in our dive plan was to kneel on a sandy spot that was below the boat and do several skills. We all did the mask flooding and hover flawless. We began our dive by heading over the reef towards a large crack. The most popular fish we saw on the way there was the blue chromis while the most popular coral was stag horn. We swam through the crack and looked under a ledge to find hundreds and hundreds of cup coral feeding. We then looked in a crack in the wall to find a crab chilling in the crack. The group continued swimming and then went through a chimney like structure to get to the end of the dive. We made a several minute safety stop and then surfaced and headed back to the boat which took us to the marina. Both of the to dive boat groups then got onto a taxi and we quickly showered before going to church. The service was on top of a large hill which had a fantastic view. Afterwards we changed back into casual clothes and went to the beach to have a lasagna dinner. We played ultimate frisbee and hung out for a while before heading back to the Internet cafe to write our blogs, ending the day.
