Today we had the usual breakfast, but this time it was served by Alamander. We then headed down to Yacht Harbor once again to begin the day’s proceedings. We got our gear and the excitement for the day was already on our and our instructors faces. The first dive site was the Kodak Quee. This oil tanker was in Pearl Harbor during the attack and was one of the only ships to survive. This ship was found a few years ago by a historian by accident and was about to be scrapped before it was bought and turned into a pretty much a massive sculpture with a sculpture on top. The sculpture on top was that of a the massive mythical Kraken. We started the dive staring down into nothingness. Until slowly a massive green and red shape slowly came into view, but the issue was, we kind of dove down off to the side and all of the way to the sea floor. We then heard a clicking sound and realized that our dive instructors were at the top of the boat whilst we were sitting 20ft below. We then met up with them and took our group picture before surveying the surrounding area. We found the anchor with its many arrowhead crabs and jawfish. We were hoping to see the previously sighted dolphins and sharks, but sadly that didn’t happen. We were then called to the ship for our tour of the inside and its several rooms. We started by swimming through its small cramped corridors to the first room that had an old rotary phone and empty bottle of rum which we gladly partook of for the camera. We then swam up a porthole into the head of the kraken to explore the the sculpture as well as the deck of the ship. The kraken was cool, but the rust and decomposition didn’t do the kraken any favors. The deck was pretty interesting, we could look into the many trapdoors leading into the depths of the behemoth and the many schools of fish inside. What was the coolest thing up there was the crane and different beams all over the deck which Harrison and I had fun climbing, rather swimming up to in order to flip and do various tricks off of. We then went to the bridge to see what we could find, but the only thing we saw was someone freediving down 30+ feet to see wreck. We then tried to get a king of the world titanic-esque photo, but we had to surface. The next dive was only a few minutes away, but it was still in mango bay. We were going to dive into the coral farms in order to clean the PVC coral trees supporting the stag horn coral. The job was rather easy. All we had to do was scrub off any algae and invasive coral from the pipes and safely remove any animals living in or in the pipe. Cleaning was a little too easy until one of the dive instructors, without realizing in it, scraped off fire coral from the supporting float which then sprayed a cloud of the coral onto our arms and faces. It was terribly painful only for a short while however. It felt like a thousand hot nails stabbing into my arms all at once. It was pretty uneventful after that. Until Zultan, one of the other dive instructors, found a decorator crab and proceeded to pretty much pet it for a few minutes. Keep in mind that Zultan is a 6-7ft Hungarian man, but that was nonetheless the end of the dive. We surfaced and began the half hour trip to the mangroves for our lunch whilst tied to the other boat. We ate, listened to classic rock, and we had a diving competition off of the top of the boats before prepping for the mangrove snorkel. The mangroves are a sort of swamp like ecosystem on and surrounding the shore. It consists of many trees that root into the water and filter out the salt in order to consume water. They also hold together the shore in event of a hurricane or storm. We were told that we would possibly see almost any type of juvenile fish or invertebrate. We hopped in and of course only attempted to go to work. With snorkeling of course, I was bombarded with the usual cascade of bubbles and sand from the people who don’t know how to calmly swim and snorkel. Anyways, the dive instructors almost immediately found a small school of baby barracuda, and as always, everybody, like a feeding frenzy in the amazon, everybody up front sped back to see. However, no one could see because everyone who swam back kicked up so much soot and sand that all anyone could see was a cloud of shells and rocks, so I swam ahead and then stopped and waited for everyone to pass once again. We didn’t really see anything else for a while until I spotted a conch shell. This thing was massive, and all I could think of was what is inside? We turned it over and luckily enough a conch was inside. This little blue guy kept peeking his eyes out and once again, everyone swarmed. We continued to find one after another until we came upon a massive field of upside down jelly fish. These ranged from the size of a gold ball to the size of a couple of basketballs. I was very careful swimming through 3ft of water next to these guys, especially because their tentacles are oriented upwards. It was even almost peaceful until I heard a massive scream behind me and turned around to see a jellyfish floating around in sand around a few people. It turns out someone kicked a jellyfish right into a fellow classmate and they in turn accidentally kicked it into a dive instructor. The classmate was panicking and everything and swimming as fast as he could back, while the dive instructor who’d been stung just as much as he had was simply sitting there telling everyone to remain calm. I however, was attempting to stay out of it and remained oblivious to where the jellyfish had gone. It turns out it was right next to me and a tentacle swiped right against my face leaving a pain I’d never felt before on my upper lip and chin. It felt as though a hot knife cut my face and then someone poured lemon juice into it. It was intense, and as I write this several hours laters, it is still throbbing. Anyways, that was the end of the day’s events. They order us back to the boat and we begin the next trip back to Yacht Harbor. That was that. We broke down our gear and cleaned it and headed home for dinner. Tomorrow we are helping out a school here on the island and having dinner at a restaurant next to a national park. We also are finally going to get see the inside of the dive shop. Until next time…
