Today I jumped up in anticipation of the regular breakfast so I could get it over with and go onto our last research dives. I was slightly worried that we hadn't found our conclusions. We expressed our concerns to our dive master and we found that small fish that I originally glanced over were actually juvenile parrotfish so our last dives were MUCH more accurate.
It was a bittersweet moment when we started prepping with the usual BCD, tank, and regulator for our dives. It was our last research dive so we wouldn't have to do research anymore but we couldn't really sit and observe the cleaning stations like we did earlier.
Our first dive was at the Chimney because we couldn't get a good mooring point at the plane like on the first plane. We didn't get to swim near the chimney coral formation but we saw a lot more fish being cleaned. We had multiple fish cleaning and being cleaned. I was surprised by the size of the parrotfish being cleaned.
The next dive was a site called Bronco Billy. This site had a LOT of current so it was very difficult to dive and the entire group was sucking air. Despite the difficulty staying around the coral and cleaning stations, we got a lot of data and by this time we knew we had come to a conclusion. We gathered up the dive slates and recorded our data in our group document. At this point it had come clear that Parrotfish really love being cleaned substantially more than any other species we saw.
Later we competed in beach games between the cabins. Our cabin started slow but quickly ranked up in points winning 2 first place activities in a row. We were up by 3 and thought we had almost secured the lead. The staff changed the rules a bit so the last place team could win and then we ended up tying the Marine Biology 2 team. The tie breaker was a human wheelbarrow race which was not our team's forte. We ended up loosing the beach games by one with a few questionable calls by the staff that might have pushed it in our favor. All-in-all I loved the activities we were given and appreciated the time the dive staff put in so we could have fun.
Our final beach activity was a night snorkel. Although the snorkel started out great with squid and octopi we eventually encountered jellyfish. I called the snorkel with some of my friends due to multiple stings but overall I would do it again due to the different fish. It would be amazing if we could do a tank dive at night though!
