Today begin with breakfast at the mango cabin. We had muffins and cereal, and I tried some guava juice with it. Afterwards, we took the taxi to the boats, I boarded Sea Monkey, and we parted ways to different dive sites. Our first dive was hectic. On the surface, we spotted a stingray, but it was gone when we descended. Andrew and Mr. Von had issues with their ears, so Ben had to take them up to the surface while Luke, Zach and I tried to figure out what to do. After a few minutes, they all returned and we began our project. We quickly realized that the area that we were studying was too big(It was 25 feet on each side) and we got very sporadic data; for example, I only counted two parrotfish while Zach county 27. After collecting our materials, we ascended and made our safety stop. On the safety stop, we saw a lot of yellowfin snapper.
On the surface, we measured our measuring string to only be 12 feet, and we began to get ready for our second dive at the same dive location. Unfortunately, Zach, Andrew, and Mr. Von did not feel ready to participate in our second dive. That left Luke, Ben and I to conduct our research. After doing our giant strides into the water, we descended and quickly found a great spot for our research. We quickly set up our markers and began to look for parrotfish. We got much more consistent data among ourselves, and I counted about 13 Parrotfish. Afterwards, we found another site and set up our area of research. I counted 6 Parrotfish, and we also saw a massive “Cetoscarus Bicolor” Parrotfish. Then, we found yet another site and I counted 13 Parrotfish. Afterwards, we had leftover air in our tanks and we swam around. We saw a lot of Parrotfish and yellowtail snapper, and we saw a large lobster.
After ascending and eating lunch on the boat, we drove to a cove to swim around some mangroves. We were hoping to see some baby lemon sharks and small juvenile fish. Unfortunately, we saw no sharks but we saw a few barracudas and a lot of Donkey Dung sea cucumbers. Donkey Dungs are cool because they sometimes will squirt out their intestines because they can grow them again. We then raced to the boats. Zach won the race for sea monkey, and I finished in third overall behind Dawson. We saw a cruise ship on the way back to the harbor. After getting back to the commissary, we hung out and I downloaded some of my GoPro pictures and videos.
We then played frisbee on the beach and had a good time before dinner. Mr. Marr and I kept dropping the frisbee, and he was making fun of me. We had delicious pulled pork sandwiches for dinner, provided by Casey and Jeff. After dinner, I had to imitate Mr. Marr dropping the frisbee because I had forgotten my water bottle in the commissary the night before.
Tomorrow, we have our final two days of research. I’m excited to learn more about Parrotfish tomorrow. We also have our night snorkel tomorrow, which I am very excited for. Overall, it was a busy day and I am looking forward to a great day tomorrow.
Photo: Queen Parrotfish
