After exploring the Green Grotto caves with our tour guide Brian we headed across the street to the Ultimate Jerk restaurant. Vegetarians and carnivores alike were stuffed to the gills. As usual, most of us left room for grape nut ice cream from the adjoining “Ultimate Sweets and treats” shop. The fruitcake was avoided.

We got back to the marine lab around 6 and had an evening to study before our exam today. It was a pretty quiet evening but our TA, Colin, went for a night snorkel and saw two stingrays and some scorpionfish! We are hoping to get out on a night snorkel tonight after the exam- my goal is to see an octopus before we leave!

Unfortunately the wind proved too much again this morning for the DITs (divers in training) and our open water dives were postponed until tomorrow. A little wave action didn’t deter a group of us from going snorkeling though, and we got a fair amount of pictures in the mangroves and at the reef crest. We saw a spotted eagle ray again on our way out, as well as some gorgeous parrotfish on the reef.

Colin is working on a project with Diadema, a long spined urchin, and after snorkeling we dried off in the sun watching him dive around trying to collect rocks for them to eat algae off of. The surge was pretty strong so it looked a bit of a difficult trip. Not one has died yet though! Urchins, that is, not Colins.

A Diadema in the wet lab.

Lastly, we had to release the sea hare, but not before it squirted bright purple ink all over. TA Amber brought it, still leaking purple, back into the ocean. May she eat algae forevermore.

A sea hare in the sea table.