Today started off with a dive right after breakfast at a site called Dancing Lady. We went down to around 60 feet and saw a lot of cool marine life! We passed by a lobster cage that had a king crab, some Caribbean spiny lobsters, and a few balloon fish, as well as seeing lots of different corals, reef fish, and plant life. The dive went for around 45 minutes, and after the boat got back to shore most of us hopped right back in the water to go snorkeling. I started out looking in the rocky areas by the mangroves since someone said an octopus lived there, but unfortunately we didn’t find him yet (later in the day a couple of people saw two octopi!) so we explored the areas a little farther out. Hiding in some sea grass, I spotted a sharp-tail eel and managed to get two photos of him before my camera died. About five minutes later I saw some kind of moray playing hide and seek, but when I tried to show my buddy to get a picture it was gone, so unfortunately I couldn’t figure out what species. After snorkeling was lunch and a lecture on reef fish, after which we decided to go snorkeling again out to the reef crest. This turned out to be a great decision because I saw a couple of lettuce sea slugs, which are one of my favorite animals.

These slugs absorb chloroplasts from the algae they eat, so they’re able to do photosynthesis for energy!

I also spent a lot of time doing a photoshoot of a balloon fish, which are quickly becoming another favorite of mine, as I seem to run into them everywhere I go.

He was ready for his close-up.

We came back to shore and worked on some species identification from the photos we had taken and started to put the pictures into a slide show. The rest of the night was spent looking over the massive list of species to start learning all the scientific names for our upcoming ID test. Overall, we had a great day and I’m excited to see what happens next!

These French Grunts seemed to be having a spirited debate.

-Monkeybread Maddie