Tomato Tegan captured us snorkeling from below at Rio Bueno today

Today the snorkelers had our second experience on the boats going out to a dive site. I have come to the conclusion the best type of boat ride are the fast ones with water spraying occasionally in your face and the little jumps like you’re on a roller coaster. Today was not that kind of boat ride, the snorkelers were on Captain Snow’s boat and we had a larger vessel today that was slightly slower than the smaller boats. We visited Rio Bueno today with a large wall of coral. Swimming out and seeing the wall of coral, with the schools of fish swimming up from the depths and the near abyss of the rest of the ocean was incredibly surreal. I love spending time in the water and being aware of just how vast the ocean is. On our snorkel this morning I saw a large puffer fish and a couple of lionfish.

Cutting off the spines of the lionfish during the dissection

After we returned from the dive and snorkel trip we had breakfast and got to work filleting four lionfish that Dr. Warren speared on his dive [Ed note: lionfish are an invasive species in the Caribbean so the government encourages tourists and locals to harvest these fish.]. I have never participated in the filleting of a fish before and enjoyed the experience. One of the lionfish had two intact fish in its stomach and another lionfish had an intact shrimp in its stomach. Here’s to another day of snorkeling and opening a fish’s stomach.

Lionfish with its last meal  [Ed note: these may be the two most pristine extracted-from-the-lionfish-stomach fish we’ve ever seen in this class.]

Hamburger Hannah