Day two certainly outclassed day one and the reason behind that is Ginger island. Ginger island had two of the best dive sites I’ve ever seen. The first location was ginger steps, an approximately ninety foot dive with some incredible topography, multiple shelfs, overhangs and sandy spots, there was even a sand channel. Sand channels are pretty darn neat because they are caused by currents and pelagic fish frequent them. During the dive, I saw some Caribbean reef sharks, which can grow up to about six feet, but the biggest one we saw was about four. A second really cool thing I saw was the biggest school of electric blue damselfish ever, which was surprising since to my knowledge they don’t school. My dive master, Becca, explained that it was a “nursery”, a nursery is when multiple juveniles school up around area where they can usually quickly dart to cover, a nursery can be composed of one brood or multiple and the one was saw had four or five broods total. We figured out there were multiple broods due to the sheer number of juveniles and adult pairs guarding the nursery. The second dive was at Ginger’s Backside. The main difference between Backside and Steps was Steps had shelfs and overhangs that made a sort of staircase while Backside was a gradually sloping reef. Like Steps, Backside has a sand channel and at one point a beautiful Great Barracuda from the channel swam into the reef and right by us. Another great thing I saw was a fully grown Rock Beauty and it was really cool comparing it to the juvenile ones Becca pointed out earlier. The juveniles only has one tiny speck of blue that over time grows into a massive rectangle covering eighty percent of the fish. The Southern Sennet, small silvery fish that look a bit like barracuda, school in the area was also an awesome sight. My dive group was also lucky enough to come across some squids. At first they were purplish but as I saw closer and closer they used their chromatophore and changed to a red color with blue speckles. After the dives, we unloaded the boat at the docks where was saw Tarpon, a migrating pelagic fish we expected to see in the sand channels nonchalantly swimming half out of the water, there were about three and one was five feet long! Then we headed to Guava Berry’s beach for lunch and then some beach games, everyone was divided up by cabin and then everyone duked it out in pictionary, water ballon dodgeball, blindfolded snorkeling and a relay race that consisted of coconut oil slip n slide and rolling in the sand. Needles to say, I was wiped after all of that. When the fun and games were over everyone ran up to the rooms to shower and change for mass. Mass was really nice, kind priest, really small choir and a very unique spin on gospel hymns. For dinner we went to the top of the baths, which has a gorgeous view, and had some really good chicken and were treated with an incredible fire dance routine afterwords. Today was fantastic and I’m already looking forward to tomorrow.
