Today I woke up to a beautiful sunrise, then I fell asleep again two minutes later. Luckily, my alarm woke me up…but not Xander, so I had to wake him up again. I then got changed into my swimsuits with chafe protection (compression shorts), and had a nice hardy bowl of fruit loops for breakfast. We then got aboard the sea monkey where Jeff then took us to our first dive site, the RMS Rhone. The Rhone was a Royal Mail Ship that sunk after a hurricane (not a jellyfish as Mr. Golab and Jeff keep reminding me) that sunk in 1867 only two years after it was made. We then descended to a depth of around 90 feet and went into the wreck. We swam inside the giant nonexistent top deck into the ship where we saw many fish and a giant lobster! We saw our first lizard fish exiting, and then two minutes later we saw a juvenile lizard fish. We then continued swimming through the wreck where we saw the captain’s spoon and saw the lucky number. We then took our safety stop, ascended, and went to the ginger steps. As soon as we got off the boat, we saw a reef sharks! Jeff took us up close and personal with the sharks. Despite being portrayed as evil and bloodthirsty in the media, Sharks were awesome! Apparently when they are curious the Sharks swim relaxed, but when they are agitated the top of the shark moves up and they swim faster. Jeff also later said that the Sharks have near microscopic hook-like structures to help them swim. Luckily we didn’t agitate the shark. Jeff even took a picture of me with the shark! We then ascended and went to Cooper Island. Jeff then told us his life lesson number seven, “don’t be a tool”, and we went to the restaurant. Their I had fish for the first time in the form of fish and chips, and it was actually really good! I definitely will have fish again. After a bit of a break, we then snorkeled of Cooper Island in a sea-grass area. A sea grass area provides food, shelter, and a breeding ground for juveniles. There I saw hundreds of juvenile fish, and even saw stingrays and green sea turtles. After around forty five minutes, we then headed back to shore and the hotel. My group and I then worked on our project. We discussed our project and sank our weighted lights so we could do our project at night. We then took a quick shower and headed to dinner where we were treated to a nice Mexican dinner and even Beth’s amazing cupcakes. Our group thence the out after dark to complete our experiment. We did the exact same process as before, except we added one more light to each weight, we checked with the light every fifteen seconds, and we switched the locations. This time though, the green light attracted the smaller fish, and more of them in contrast to our last attempt where it was the exact opposite. We hypothesize that our experiment was flawed because of small differences in the locations and the fact that our visibility was terrible. We did however see that the color of the light does have a small difference on the amount of fish visiting, therefore with a better experiment we could possibly prove or disprove our hypothesis. We then went back showered up and went to bed (Doc told us we could write this blog the next day, which is today for me).
