Location: Pillars of Hercules, Antigua
Heyyyyy, welcome back to the blog. Today, we woke up at seven and found it pretty humid since it just finished raining. We had some eggie bread (as Ben says, but its French toast) and started our first day of class! Meg and Ben introduced us to oceanography, and it was pretty great. Actually stoked to start my lit paper on my topic. After class, the open water students went out on a dive while everyone else went to shore. I stayed behind to get a bit of a head start on my paper and do some research on what books we have on jellyfish
Then we had lunch, and the certified divers went out to work with the coral restorationists again. Yesterday, they collected data and attached small coral nubbins to a box nursery underwater. Today, they replaced and rebuilt three coral trees with larger corals to help them regrow (pictures to come tomorrow!). The OW students went for their final open water dive at the Pillars of Hercules, where they saw the coral restoration work and a sea turtle! I swam to shore and explored the island for an hour, did some snorkeling (had a VIRGIN Pina Colada), and then swam back to the boat. The day had been bright, sunny, and warm, but before we knew it, we heard thunder from the distance. Then it started POURING!!
Like, I just got dry from swimming back, and now Im soaking wet. It actually hurt how hard the rain was coming down. It quickly died down, though, and we finished our day by heading to shore, picking up pizza, cold drinks, and ice cream, and spending the day at the beach having fun for our first sign-out the night! The sunset was beautiful, but once again, as soon as it turned dark, we saw a ton of lightning and got really harsh winds. We all raced into the dinghies to head back to the boat to beat the storm, and now were all starting to settle down for the night. Its been a pretty adventurous day with the day being filled with so many activities. Im always looking forward to the next day!(PS Hi, mom, dad, Ingrid, Morgan, and Erik 🙂 Special shoutout <3)