Waking up this morning I knew I had a tiring and exciting day to look forward to. Many people have told me that the rhone dive was their favorite dive. I was very excited for this dive because it was going to be the deepest I had ever been on a dive. After breakfast we got to the boat and set off. When we finally arrived to the dive site and it was packed. Before we went down for the first dive we had a little background on the ship. I learned that it was a British vessel that had been sunk during a hurricane. That is all they told us about the ship before the first dive because they said in the layover between our two dives they would tell us the full story. When we descended we reached around seventy to seventy five feet. After about a minute swim we reached the ship and it was beautiful. It was truly amazing to see all the different types of coral and fish that had built a home on or around the ship. Because we were a lot deeper and the site did not allow fishing we saw many of the same fish as we did the days before but they were much larger. When we swam through the ship I saw two schools of fish which was one of my coolest experiences. I had seen on tv how the school moves as one and I had always thought that was cool, but to see it in person less than a foot away from them was so cool. We also saw a giant barracuda when we swam through the boat. The last fish we saw that I thought was amazing was a baby eel. I have always seen pictures of eels and thought they were weird and gross, they are exactly like I thought they would be. The first dive was great but I couldn’t wait to hear the whole story about the ship when we came up. I learned that the ship was being used sort of like the titanic was being used for. It was for the upper class to have a vacation through the Caribbean’s. I also learned that like the titanic when this ship was released it was deemed unsinkable. The weather guy on the ship thought just a strong north wind was coming but it ended up being a hurricane, only 22 crew survived and 1 passenger survived. The survivors swam to an island and sent all of the luggage and belongings of the passengers on the ship back to Britain because they thought it was a curse. In return the queen let them stay on the island with no residency taxes and all they had to do was pay her one pound of salt each year. Now it was time for our second dive, when we went down we looked at many more interesting things. The first fish I saw was a squid on the sea floor which was very cool to seem next I saw a huge eel. The one we saw on our first dive was a baby but this one was huge. My favorite part of the dive was seeing the propellers because they were the biggest things I had ever seen. If you were just right next the they would look like a metal plate so you had to back off so you could actually see the whole thing. After our second dive we went over to cooper island for some of the best fish and chips I had ever tasted. After that we snorkels for about an hour on the shore of the island. Right before i was about to jump in for my snorkel some one put a baby octopus on the boat it crawled on my hand and was one of the weirdest feeling things ever. Right when we put it back in the water it inked and swam away. I saw couple sea turtles and tons of sting rays. Most of the sting rays were hiding in the sand so they were pretty hard to find but once you found them they were very cool to look at. We also saw some more big barracuda. So far today has been my favorite day and I still have one more snorkel tonight.
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