A beautiful day in Jamaica; temperature was about 85 degrees at noon, windy. This is our second day on the island. Some of us worked our way to the kitchen at around 7 am and looked pretty beat. 07:30 Meet with Anthony, the Dive Instructor, to sign release forms and to hear about the formalities of diving and snorkeling.

08:00 Breakfast: bacon, eggs, papaya, bananas, and orange or tropical juice (not from concentrate).

09:00 Brief intro lecture on the dangers of the reef; an intro of what to stay away from – what bites, stings, or hurts.

09:30 Those who are scuba certified went on their checkout dive. Those who were planning to get certified or who planned to snorkel (myself included) snorkeled.

11:45 Lecture: Coral Reef Origins by Chris Gobler.

13:00 Lunch: doughie rolls (quite tasty), salad, ackee and saltfish, and banana.

14:00 Those who planned to get certified start their training while the rest of the group (that’s me) snorkeled the reef. Check out my first underwater photo below.

16:30 Lecture By Brad Peterson: Coral Reef Productivity. We learned about the ecology and structure of coral communities.

18:00 Dinner: Potatoes, beans with chicken and vegetables, carrots and some sort of green vegetable.

20:00 Evening lecture with Chris Gobler: Coral Reef Biology and Physiology – We learned about the structure of corals and the interactions between/within coral species.

21:30 Mariana and I helped Chris with an experiment that he has been working on. It involved growing marine algae at different nutrient concentrations. Pretty interesting stuff! We have been busy and tired. You try doing two dives a day!! O yeah- and plus three lectures…but hey, I’m in Jamaica.

This is Marina, signing off.