This morning I ate scrambled eggs, mixed berry Greek yogurt and and drank lots of water to properly prepare for the day. After breakfast we gathered our BCDs, tanks and regulators and were assigned our boats; mine was the Sea Dragon. I set up my gear and became acquainted with my Hungarian dive master, Zoltan. We set out to our first dive site called Bronco Billy. The purpose of this dive was to make sure all divers could perform basic safety maneuvers. I, along with the rest of my group passed with flying colors. Once completed with the safety check we could finally do some diving! When diving we saw fire coral, bleached coral, garden eels, banded butterfly fish and many other things. Next, after time to decompress and swimming we went on to the second dive site called the Chimney. The chimney was the favorite dive site of renowned SCUBA diver Jacques Cousteau. This dive it’s was also a favorite spot of early explorers to dock their ships due to it being the most sheltered area on the island. Upon descent, our chaperone and one of our group members had issues equalizing so they were not able to continue. After dealing with those two, Zultan lead the three of us through the dive site. During this dive we saw squirrelfish, and 2 1/2ft barracuda, an octopus, a nurse shark, several grouper, s cow fish, several lizard fish a dog snapper and a spotted moray eel as well as other more common fish. Eventually we dame across the reason as to why the site is called the chimney. We went through a swim through that had about 3 feet of room and was fairly tall. We made it through no problem and it was obvious why Jacques Cousteau loved this site.
During this dive Zultan led us to large groupings of both staghorn and elkhorn coral. At this site I saw coral bleaching and several diseases plaguing the coral which led me to become motivated to work hard to help preserve coral and the marine ecosystem. Looking forward to the future I am very excited to begin the research dives and to expand my scope of knowledge and experience in the Caribbean ecosystem as well as developing a closer bond with my fellow Jesuit brothers.
