Ping

! Bang! Bomb! The day started off early for most of the students today.  Around 3 o’clock in the morning Justin, Chris, and I were awoken to the sound of a tropical storm.  It sounded like the tin roof in our room was going to collapse onto us, but for once we had some relief from the heat.  We went back to sleep hoping for another beautiful day that we are used to.

When we awoke, the rain had stopped, but it was still windy and cloudy.  We glanced out at the ocean from our balcony to see waves 4 feet high breaking at the ridge of the bay.

We went to breakfast not long after, we had pancakes and hotdogs, yum.

Our normal scuba diving/snorkeling trip was canceled today do to the weather.  So we had lecture with Gobler instead.  But the weather didn’t stop a few of us “hardcore” divers.  Brooke, Justin, Colin, Peterson, Anthony and I decided to go anyway.  We went on a short ride to a new dive site not too far away.  The water was not as clear as the previous dives due to the surf, but it was still a lot of fun.  We dove to around 50+ feet and worked our way up from there.  Some things we saw were a giant lobster, some angel fish, corals, and some sponges that sting (I found that out the hard way).  Justin and I also caught an arrow crab and a small pipefish which we brought back to the marine lab.

After lunch most of the students worked on a slide show that we are presenting to the class tomorrow after dinner.  While we were working a lizard found its way into the research building.  Of course I had to catch it, but this lizard had one up on me.  He found his way from my arm up my shirt and I needed some assistance from some of my fellow students to get him out.  We also welcomed the dean of the marine science department, David Conover to spend a few days with us at the Discovery Bay Marine Lab.  We had lecture with Peterson later that day and I think a few us learned more about sea grass then we ever wanted to know.  For dinner we had fried fish, mashed potatoes, ham, and cake.

I hope tomorrow will be little nicer, but we still have a lot of work to do before our presentations are done.

Brian Ludwig