All of us woke up a little earlier than usual today to go to a new snorkel and dive site called Rio Bueno. Although most people felt tired as they were getting their gear together, I was pumped and excited to put all of my stuff together as I had a bet with Dr. Warren that I could get all of my gear together on a boat within 10 minutes. The results of this bet were controversial as there was a lot of sabotage from Dr. Warren whether that be distracting me, blocking my way, or even moving my gear. I initially thought I had won the bet as I had put my fins, snorkel, and my entire bc on a boat, but one of my fins was moved to another boat without me knowing it. After giving it some thought, we decided that it didn’t matter which boat I put my gear in, and how many boats I could use wasn’t specified either so technically speaking all of my gear was on the boats, but that’s just me. [Ed note: this is true, only Dan believes he won the bet.]

After a boat ride, we finally made it to the site where everyone got their gear on and in the water. It was cool to start our dive with all of the snorkelers as the last time everyone was close to each other in the water was on the first day here in Jamaica. The dive was really cool and was my first one that was a wall which although it was very easy to accidentally be deeper than you want, I did a great job (I think) of staying no deeper than 60 feet. [Ed note: Dan did a very good job on this dive.] There was a really big moray, a lionfish, and a bunch of what I think are sharpnose puffers which were my highlights of this dive. After we got back to the boats, I still had a good amount of air left so I was able to swim around in the snorkel site and found some cool elkhorn coral structures.

A big and scary moray eel (photo creds to Julia)

A cool flamingo tongue on a sea fan

-Dan