Today started off with the usual cereal, juice, and granola bars. An otherwise, exciting breakfast. We then proceeded down to the marina for the final two dives of our project. We first dived at the dive sight known as the Chimney. Discovered by Jacque Cousteau, this dive sight consisted of massive coral heads, many an anchor scar, and a rock formation known as a Chimney. We got straight to business finding blue wrasse and Goby cleaning stations almost immediately. We then finally started seeing the results we wanted. Hundreds of parrot fish all around, and even in the cleaning stations it was coming up in the 10s and 20s. It wasn’t really a recreational dive necessarily, we didn’t even get to see the Chimney, but it was still fun. The next dive was at a site known as Bronco Billy. It was named this way because of how difficult it is to swim against the current, almost like riding a bucking bronco. This dive was also business oriented, but before we dove, we again got the chance to do some flips off of the top. Anyways, it took us a while, but we found two Goby cleaning stations that were very filled with activity. Once again many parrot fish were seen and recorded. Otherwise it was a somewhat uneventful and strenuous because of the current. One funny thing did happen when a group mate lost his slate to the current and tried to swim after it and ended up 30-40 yards away and could only barely see us before Becca caught up to him and dragged him back. That was the one thing that really happened during the dive. When we got back to the marina, we found out that someone had left their dust cap off of a valve on their regulator which caused the whole boat to have to do twenty push ups in front of everybody else. It wasn’t difficult, but I heard from friends on the other boat that some of the boat sadly struggled with doing even five. We then ate lunch and went back to the resort to work on our projects. We then went to the beach to meet the dive instructors and play beach games. We separated into our groups and with our dive instructor we’d been working with all week, got into the action. The first game was simple, who can bury a person from their cabin the fastest. We sadly got third. The next game was sand pictionary, and we beat everyone extremely fast. The third game was called late for work. We had to run from one pole to another, grab a piece of diving gear, put it one properly, run back and hand it off to the next person. We had to this with every person and every piece of gear until the last person had all of the gear. We once again won by a landslide. The supposed last game was called blind buddy. This is where I was blind folded and my teammates had to guide me through a pole slalom, into the water to swim around a buoy and back to the slalom to the finish the race. We lost by 2 seconds even though someone on the winning team cheated and didn’t go around the pole slalom and skipped 2. The next game was just for fun, but still to see who’d get first place overall. This obstacle course consisted of a baseball bat dizzy spin thing, knocking down a pole with a pelivic thrust and a weight belt, rolling down a hill, and then a 50yd dash swim. We sadly got second but we’re still tied for first. The tiebreaker was a wheel barrel race, and let’s leave the details at, we lost. We then ate delicious barbecue sausages and burgers before a night snorkel. We were given a flash light a partner and tod to follow the leader. We saw 2 octopi, a massive tarpon, many squads of squid, and numerous jelly fish. So now I’m sitting here with stinging rashes and a slight sun burn on my neck whilst saying goodnight.
