Hello everyone!

Bri’s spotted eagle ray.

I am happy to announce that the wind has left the island, for at least a few hours! As I am writing this, what I have done thus far today is snorkel around Discovery Bay and scuba dive a little bit. It was incredible to be in the water finally.
At the beginning of snorkeling, we were just getting the hang of things looking for species of algae and invertebrates to add to our water tables in the wet lab. My buddy, Jess and I spent around 30 minutes snorkeling around in 6-foot-deep water, while both trying to find corals and avoid hitting them.

Unfortunately, the water hadn’t calmed down by then so there was a lot of suspended sediments, making it very difficult to see a distance greater than 3 feet in front of you. Regardless, it was so refreshing to be frolicking around the water.

After Colin, Professor Brad and Amber came back from their diving excursion in the morning, Brad asked us if we wanted to snorkel out to the reef crest, which is about a quarter mile swim round trip (with added time getting lost like Shannon and I did…). BUT I GOT TO SEE A JUVENILE SPOTTED EAGLE RAY, and let me tell you, I was so excited. If you read my blogpost from a few days ago, you’d know that a spotted eagle ray is something I was desperately hoping to see. We continued to snorkel around for a while until Shannon and I popped our heads out to find the rest of the group only to find that we had drifted so far from our three other group members.

After that snorkel, Shannon, Rachel and I had to practice some of our dive skills so that we can take our open water dives soon to finish out Open Water Dive Scuba Certification. We did it right before lunch so we were all pretty hungry, but “oh, it’ll take 8 minutes to finish this up” turned into 40 minutes due to surging water, not enough weight to counteract our buoyancy and low-visibility water. We were all so happy that plates of food were made for us to eat when we got back.
Anyways I’m off to class now but I will leave you with a nice tip for snorkeling with a wetsuit on; don’t forget to put sunscreen on your hands because they will burn.

Fair Winds and Calm Seas,
Bri

[Title for blog: The Wind! It’s Gone!]