Last night, Jack, Noah, Suarez and I embarked on a journey that would change science forever. We went into the ocean with our light sabers prepeared to tally the fish. Our green one, ended up getting more large fish, however, the blue light, had an abundance of small damselfish. We will repeat the same project tomorrow night. Now, back to the blog. This morning, the alarms didn’t wake up me, Noah did. Our cabin, “Mango”, was in charge of the breakfast for this morning. We made sure to get up super early in order to set up everything. I cleaned the floors, wiped the windows, and set the food out with all my cabin mates. Casey surprised us with honeybun for breakfast. After breakfast, like the past couple days, we headed out to our first dive. We traveled to two purposefully sunken ships that settled on the bottom of the ocean around 90 feet deep. Down there, our air would go twice as fast, so it was a relatively quick dive. While exploring, we saw many species of snapper, a lionfish, a southern stingray, and hogfish. We also dove under the boat that was flipped upside down. Towards the end of the dive, I actually ran out of air, fortunately Jeff didn’t want me to dive so he gave him his octopus so I could live a bit longer. Next, we headed to cistern point, a dive site known for many species of fish. Jeff told us about a very abundant species of animal that hang around in the air: the wild horned buttfish. This is a treasure to see because these are known commonly as snorkelers. Before heading into the water, we were warned of the currents. I didn’t think it would be that bad, until I jumped into the water. I was immediately swept away and had to struggle to stay next to the boat. Fortunately the further down I descended, the less of a problem the current became. Eventually, Suarez and I sank to the bottom, where fish swarmed us. I have never see so many fish in my life! Sergeant majors, barracuda, a sea cucumber, tarpon, French angelfish, and squid completely surrounded us. I swam around in utter awe of how beautiful the world really is. I though to myself, “there truly must be a God, because this is too spectacular for there not to be”. Jeff finally signaled for us to head back and go up. We had a special treat right before surfacing: 34 tarpon were hanging out under our boat. So we headed back to our beach for another filling lunch of cold cut sandwiches. From there, we participated in the marine biology Olympics. Our cabin competed in 4 events:dodgeball, pictionary, a relay race, and a blind swim. We lost early on but came back to tie for 3rd. After this competition, we had to quickly get ready for mass. At 5:30 sharp, mass started. I was amazed at the location of the church. It was on one of the highest points on the island and it overlooked the bay. I was at a loss for words when I attended mass. My dad popped into my mind. I thought of how much we would have enjoyed this mass especially since it was in a place of beauty. The mass was about God having pity for us for not having a shepherd. I was actually changed a little by this message. I had a new perspective of things. By this point, we were all starting to get a bit hungry, so we went to a nice restaurant at the top of the baths where I ate some mahi with rice. My mouth burst with flavor. At the end of dinner, we had a unique form of entertainment. A group of fire dancers came out and gave us a show. Today was a fantastic day. Tomorrow will be every better because we will check out a natural ship wreck and our second day of our project.
