Location: Roseau, Dominica
Today started out with our first lecture from my personal favorite unit of the class, physical oceanography! This unit is so awesome because we learn all about the winds, currents, tides, and weather patterns all around the globe that not only do we see and feel on a day-to-day basis, but they are so incredibly important to our lives on board as sailors. Next up was a special leadership meets oceanography class where we took some time to learn more about the Kalinago Barana Aute, the largest remaining indigenous group in the Caribbean. This group has faced many challenges with incredible amounts of resilience and determination. It is now part of a pioneering effort for Dominica to become the first climate-resilient nation, including a detailed array of strategies to be prepared to face climate change and the increasing frequency and severity of storms. We have the exciting opportunity to meet with some of their members tomorrow to learn more about their culture and efforts, so today was eager preparation for the field trip.
Lunch was a fan favorite! Thank you, Jack and sous chefs, for the pizza bagels to fuel our dives! Todays dives were a bit special because we got to dive with a local operator, Dive Dominica. We all loaded up our gear into one of their dive boats and headed off to our first site, a wall dive! The wall dive seemed really cool (and it certainly was), but it may have been overshadowed when we got to our second site and, upon descending, saw our first SHARK of the semester! Everyone got a nice long look at this beautiful nurse shark resting under a rocky overhang. We were beaming. The dive ended on an exciting note as well because we wrapped up at a unique shallow spot called Champagne Reef. Champagne reef gets its name from all the warm little bubbles coming through cracks in the coral and spots in the sand and floating up to the surface. This is caused by geothermal activity, which Dominica has quite a bit of, but still only one bubbling reef.
After and awesome day we all had dinner out a restaurant overlooking the water next to the dive shop, followed by a country presentation led by Rocco and Sammy to give us a little extra background info before our field trip tomorrow morning.