Location: Martinique
We started the day with boat appreciation, which involved scrubbing down the entire boat and making sure all lines and other things were neatly put away and cleaned. Next, we had an MTE class review for our upcoming midterm that will get us our crew certifications, which everyone is looking forward to. After we finished our work, we went shore to Martinique for the first time. It was a very pretty island despite having a devastating volcanic eruption in 1902. There were still ruins and charred buildings in the small city that were constant reminders of the danger looming just above the city. Martinique was also the first island we had been to where almost nobody spoke or understood English, seeing as it was a French island. It was definitely a cool experience; however, it also proved frustrating when it took me 15 minutes to find a bathroom because nobody could understand what I was saying, and all the signs were in French. Back on board, our captain/dive instructor Ben and first mate Nick had gone on a dive to check out the site where we will be doing our deep dive tomorrow, which is one of the dives that are part of our Advanced Open Water certification. They brought a spear gun with them and killed several lionfish along the way; as we learned in OCB, lionfish are invasive in the Caribbean and are harmful to the ecosystem because they eat everything, and nothing eats them. They brought one back to the boat, and we had an impromptu lionfish dissection up on deck with OCB instructor Jessica. After a delicious dinner of some locally caught tuna with cheesy vegetables, the day ended with a documentary on a pretty sweet animal, the giant squid.