Hi there from Jamaica!

Ever since we have arrived in Jamaica, each day has been a tightly packed fun-filled exploration of the water, the creatures in it, and learning about their relationships. Each time someone goes out to snorkel or to scuba dive you are sure to see something new and amazing. I have to be honest, at first I was a little nervous about even snorkeling in these waters. I’m not the greatest swimmer nor have I ever snorkeled before, but I’m glad I’ve gotten the opportunity to snorkel here in Jamaica by these beautiful coral reefs!

A school of silversides that we found in the mangroves.

I am not joking when I tell you that each time I have been in the water I have seen something different and exciting. Just yesterday I went out with Gabriel to snorkel in the waters just off the dock of the lab and we were able to see a beautiful school of silversides swimming in the mangroves. We spent most of the morning snorkeling a bit deeper in the water and then we decided to make our way back for lunch when all of a sudden Gabriel starts pulling me and is pointing at something. My goggles were a bit foggy at the time so I’m thinking to myself “What the heck is he pointing at?!?! I don’t see anything?!?!” This continues on for a good minute until I finally see this long skinny outline of a fish. Then it hits me and I’m like OH MY GOD!!! IS THAT A BARRACUDA??? OH SHOOT!!! Of course I had to take a picture and a very poor quality video (hey it’s not easy trying to film while swimming to follow a fish), but yeah that was the highlight of my day yesterday.

Brad jumping into the water to find the BRUV. He dove down to 120 ft.

Today was a different adventure both good and kind of bad. I got to go out on my second trip to help deploy and retrieve BRUVs (baited remote underwater videos) for a research project that we are doing and go snorkeling by Dairy Bull. This BRUV trip wasn’t as exhilarating as my first trip since the waves weren’t as rough and this time we had a pretty good idea of what we were actually doing. However, even though we were acting as a well-oiled machine after setting the first BRUV the second BRUV deployment went awry. We measured the depth to be around 48 ft, which was in the range of our 100 ft depth limit. So as we were setting it up, we may have drifted a bit to deeper waters and ended up deploying out BRUV in approximately 190 ft deep water. Yeah so long story short not only on my first BRUV trip did we lose a gopro, but now we upped the ante and lost a whole BRUV rig. Apparently Andrew and I bring bad luck to these BRUV trips. Thus that was the not so good part of the day, but on the bright side we got to see a cuttlefish in broad day light and it was very cute. Brad and Joe may go out tomorrow morning to see if they can recover the lost rig so I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Well it’s time to go eat dinner now so I’ll keep you guys updated in the upcoming days about my adventures here. I’m definitely looking forward to what is in store tomorrow!

It may be hard to see but the cuttlefish is in the center of the picture tentacles flared and everything. So cute!

• Justina

P.S. To my family squish the momo. <3 Thanks love you guys.