Location: Portsmouth, Dominica
This be Captain Panda on day 18,
Today we raised the Fisherman Anchor at the crack of dawn because we had to motor on over to Portsmouth to catch a viewing of our good friend Calypso. Our early voyage was calm, and we motored through water so calm you could see your reflection in the sea. Not only that, the sunrise was magnificent, and there were angel rays off our starboard bow almost the entire time. One of the crew who had a keen eye spotted a pair of dolphins in the distance off our port side. After two hours of almost mirror water motoring, we arrived at Portsmouth, awaiting our chance for adventure and scientific testing. The first of our crew boarded a wooden motorboat with the cool name of Cobra. While the rest hung, back to do scientific salinity/temperature tests in a second brightly colored wooden boat as they approached the shore.
The cobra landed, and we were immediately offered freshly picked mangoes for the small price of 1 US dollar. With mangoes in our stomachs and a sense of adventure in our hearts, we boarded a rowboat and headed up the mouth of the Indian River. To best describe this river is to describe a shallow river in Mississippi where everything is lush tropical green with dense foliage. Our guide, with his trusty oars, paddled us up the river, where we visited Calypsos house (from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean). Unfortunately, she was unavailable to make a guest appearance, so we paddled on by. The river was dead calm, with only the oars and the fish stirring the water at all. We continued the nature/river tour until we reached this awesome juice bar in the middle of these woods. It was super cool. They had a flower garden out back, and you had to park your rowboat on a wooden dock just to get in. Our teacher says that they have the best passion fruit juice on the island, but I believe the Guava juice could have a fair shot at that title as well. We drank our drinks, saw some flowers, filmed a hummingbird in slow motion, and then went back onto the rowboat to collect data of the salinity and temperature, just like group two.
After having a couple of random teachable moments, we obtained our data and proved that this river was rocking a halocline. The area where the water was separated due to different salinity levels was due to the freshwater being on top while the salt was on the bottom. The river hosted a variety of wildlife that would take too long to explain, so simply, there were fish, crabs, and lizards. After our rowing adventure, we went back to Ocean Star, where we listened to an oceanography lecture about currents. We mopped up our literature reviews, enjoyed some tacos, and did our first Navigation Master course. As they say, the rest is history. Have a Great night!
-Captain Panda (aka Ben)