Meghan's dive buddy.

Today was a welcome break from studying and exams. There was somewhat of a celebration last night after the last exam ended. Almost everyone stayed up late playing volleyball, or basketball, listening to music, and enjoying a ginger beer. Only two people showed up to breakfast this morning as a result, not including Brad, Joe, and Amber (our lowest attendance rate yet). Everyone met with them, later in the day to discuss their project proposals, and after lunch met in the wet lab to work on our class project, which involves the growth of epiphytes, in areas of groundwater discharge in the bay.

The freckled sea hare.

I missed that meeting, as some wires got crossed with the dive instructor, and she thought we weren’t diving today. When she arrived at one, Kathleen and I were given the okay to go diving instead, as we’re still DITS (divers in training). I only have one dive left before I’m SCUBA certified! When we got back nothing group related was scheduled, so Kathleen and I went back out (snorkeling this time) to collect enough spotted seahares for our research project. I only found four or five seahares, but Kathleen had nets full of them, probably fifteen or twenty total. I’m still not quite sure where she found them all. We’re using the spotted sea hares, as we have only been able to find two of the freckled seahares, but have almost thirty of the spotted seahares.

Annoyed sea hares.

While we were collecting them, the majority of the hares decided to ink us, turning the water purple for a moment or two. Tomorrow we’re going to Dunn’s River Falls, and Ochos Rios, so I probably need to start my project, by identifying, sorting, separating, and weighing our seahares tonight. Today’s schedule was a little more relaxed, and though the water was a little rough, the dive was a lot of fun.

Megan