Day 2: this morning started off with a rush at 6:30 to get dressed and run to the supervisor’s cabin to eat breakfast. After a nice hardy breakfast provided by the amazing teachers, my group headed out to get ready for the trip out to sea. The first dive sight we arrived at was ginger hole which was about a 15-20 minute boat ride from the yatch club. As soon as a hit the water I got a little chilly because the dive site has large clouds blocking the sun at some points. My group got all of our supplies together and headed to find our first location to collect our data for our project. We swam for around 5 minutes until we located a solid 15×15 ft bunch of algae covered coral with some parrotfish in the mix. While collecting data, two black tip reef sharks circled our site and frightened the rest of the parrot fish away. We swam back to the boat shortly afterwards and got ready for the next dive site. As we passed around ginger island we arrived at the second dive site, back ginger. The second we got there, it started to rain which delayed our entree by about 30-40 minutes in which the sea dragon spent swimming next to the boat. After the rain passed we scuba dived down to the next site for our date and waited there and collected it for 10 minutes. We headed out farther and spotted a giant shrimp that was at least 4 feet long and was hiding underneath a rock formation. Then the mighty Zoltan spotted a ginormous green moray eel curled up inside of a hallowed out coral structure. As we watched the eel hide in the protection of its home, Zoltan spotted a lion fish and approached the invasive animal. He loaded the spear gun and pointed it right at it and fired. He hit the lion fish center-mass and as it struggled to escape, he held it against a rock and stabbed it in the back of the head with a large knife. The fish bled out a green toxin along with its blood and was the highlight of the day. We loaded back onto the boat and ate lunch as we went to our next spot of the day, salt island. We docked the boat and hiked to the center of the island, which is a very shallow salt lake which had a coating of salt on the bottom. The lake was very interesting and the history of the people who used to mine salt all day was very different. The inhabitants provided ships with salt for storing meats and for seasoning on meals. Me along with a group of 3 other guys went all the way across the lake, never getting more than a foot deep. While walking across, we all fell through the salt bottom and got all of our feet stuck in the mud, with the salt cutting at our ankles and burning them at the same time. Eventually we were able to make it out and back to the boat. We got on the boat and headed back to the yatch club and guava berry where we ended the day at sea.
