Location: Dry Tortugas, FT
Today, I started my day by having an anchor watch from 5:00 AM – 6:00 AM and enjoyed the sunrise. After I woke everyone up at 7:00 AM, we enjoyed a great breakfast of yogurt and granola and lifted the anchor to head off to loggerhead island where our first dive was planned to be. Once we had arrived, we set up all our dive gear and hopped in the dinghy to get close to the dive site called windjammer, which was a shipwreck. We were diving in two groups, and the first group was able to get down and do the dive. However, my group did not end up doing the dive due to a very strong current, and there is a lot of jellyfish. We all got back on the boat and enjoyed lunch, which was grilled cheese and tomato soup. After lunch, we motored to our next dive site called the maze. We were all able to do this dive; however, I experienced problems with air in my BCD, making it hard for me to stay down, causing me to run out of air fast, leading to an early surface form the dive. On the dive, we saw a huge loggerhead sea turtle, which was really cool. After the dive, we all got back on the boat where we then motored to another dive site to check out for a potential dive for tomorrow. while we were all diving, William and Jake were able to get through all of the confined water dives needed for the open water certification which was super exciting! While we were motoring to the dive spot for tomorrow, we saw several dolphins, but in particular, two dolphins came to the bow and were swimming along with our boat until one of them hit the boat by accident and then disappeared. Right now, we are almost back at the anchor spot that we have been at for the past two nights. Everyone is finishing up their jobs for the night before we shower and watch the movie Blue Planet II. We just watched the sun sink into the water, and I think we can all agree that we saw a green flash!