Today Xander and I woke up around 7:00 after a restless first night and went to breakfast. After breakfast, we went to our first dive aboard the Sea Monkey with Jeff and Beth, our instructors. Our first dive was a checkout dive, and it went fairly well for my first time diving at sea. My weights were a bit off, but other than that, the dive went well. First we practiced basic skills such as respirator removal, mask clearing, and buoyancy. We saw lots of parrot fish, squirrelfish, and blue chrome on the first dive. We also swam through a school of bar Jack which was awesome. My partner, Jack and I also found a feather duster worm, which when we got close to it, it collapsed in on itself. After the first dive we got out and went to the second site, the coral gardens. During our dive, Jeff would point out and teach us the names of the marine life. Jeff pointed out the abundant parrotfish, triggerfish, an eel, crabs that were hiding on top of the coral, and lionfish hiding in holes on the rocks. Jack and I also saw three barracudas and a spotted drum before we headed back to the surface and ate lunch. After lunch we went to the baths, which was a sprawling cluster of rocks and caverns. Beth taught us about how the rocks were formed by the tectonic plates shifting and displacing magma creating granite. We ended up getting the extended tour of the Baths with Gaz (we got lost) and after the baths we snorkeled back to the beach. We then ate diner on the beach and watched the sunset. Tomorrow I look forward to beginning our research project and cleaning the reef. Today was a great day, and tomorrow will be one too.
