Today is the culmination of everyone’s stress and fatigue; some of us are suffering from mental breakdowns, bone injuries, accidental soiled wetsuits, and even bloody noses, however, we all continue to laugh and dance it all off with a smile. Today we started off the day getting up at 6:30am for early snorkeling and dives which was a blessing compared to previously getting up at 5:30am. Then after breakfast, we finished any missing data for our transects by measuring diadema, parrot fish, surgeon fish, and bottom cover. Following data collection, we had lunch and a couple of us went on either research dives, contributed to organization of data sites consisting of seagrass or clams, continued to study for our ID test tomorrow until dinner, and played with a sea turtle near the mangrove nursery.

A sea turtle eating a jellyfish, Cassiopea frondosa, which was found by divers and placed into the nursery because it was blind.

At dinner, those who had been participating in dives, snorkeling, or ID presentations were overwhelmed with the lectures and ID’s they had to catch up on. The ID project entails that students remember the Phyla, Classes, Genus, and Species of invertebrates, plants, and algae typically found in Discovery Bay, Jamaica. We’ve managed to survive this stress by playing jeopardy, using funny pneumonics, singing songs, doing pushups for wrong answers, and playing hangman. However, I don’t think we would have made it through this trip without our kitchen cooks, Mrs. Precious and Mrs. June, because they always lightened up our anxiety with DESSERT! It’s the perfect way to end to the day and it always keeps us going. Thus, although we are experiencing overwhelming stress right now for our ID test tomorrow, we will eventually look back on our stress as rewarding and prize ourselves with Dessert at the end of the day.

– Sydney