Location: Lee Bay
We woke up to the sun peaking over the surrounding islands and a delicious breakfast of bagels(if only they were toasted…) smothered with, well, you name it – chocolate, peanut butter, cream cheese, jelly. We then proceeded to do our post-meal ritual of saltys and freshys doing to dishes, gophers chucking utensils into the kitchen, and deckies doing manual labor. This morning was action-packed (just like every other second of life on the Ocean Star) between learning what the daunting numbers on the diving table mean, having a briefing on fires igniting in the kitchen, and a shipmate slipping off the deck-man overboard!-, figuring out how to operate the dinghy, and the advanced divers of our crew had their first dive of the trip! After these numerous activities, we sat down to a yet again delicious meal of Quesadillas. When it is dead silent on the ship, you know good food is being eaten. This afternoon, the open water trainees hauled on our wetsuits, hoisted up our BCDs, shoved our masks over our heads, slipped our fins onto our feet, and became human fish. We descended into the turquoise surface and were surrounded by a dense blue fog. All I could hear was my breath inhaling and exhaling, and all I could see were the bubbles floating up from my regulator. Amidst the sandy blue fog, I saw a shadow, and as I swam closer, Kris, aka King Neptune, was instructing me to perform a fin pivot. With an inhale, I floated up toward the surface, and with an exhale, I came crashing back onto the seafloor. When we surfaced, the fog disappeared and was replaced by the clear sky and the sun dancing on the waves pushing us around in the water. That afternoon, we all had time to relax in the sun, followed by an early dinner of barbeque chicken (which I heard was amazing; I’m a vegetarian) and mashed potatoes, which I can say for myself were delicious. After dinner, we had our intro to Oceanography and learned about the pioneers of this new science. Then, we watched a fish slide show where we learned about the numerous ways to identify fish and the thousands of different types of fish swimming beneath our boat. Then, we all crashed into our beds.