Location: Portsmouth, Dominica
Hello, Ocean Star blog fans!
Today, we woke up and had breakfast before shuttling over to a small dock, where we met our tour guide for the morning. Today was a cool one- an Indian River canoe tour! There is actually a river for every single day of the year here in Dominica, but in my biased opinion, this one is the best. We got paddled up the river as we collected samples of salinity, temperature, and acidity using some of the different science equipment onboard (a refractometer, YSI, and pH probe). It was cool to see a real example of how estuaries differ in these factors and are an important ecosystem for a bunch of organisms. Also, on the tour, we passed Calypsos house from Pirates of the Caribbean! I am a fake fan because I havent actually watched all the movies, but it was pretty cool to see. We came back in time for a lunch of buffalo chicken (and tofu) salad made by Kackie, then straight into a couple hours of EFR practice. That is the Emergency First Responder portion of our Rescue Diver certification we are all working towards. Ill set the scene for you: we went one at a time, saving a dummys life from different hypothetical emergency scenes while the other students looked on and did other hypothetical tasks, like calling 911, flagging down the ambulance, or switching on and off compressions. We may have lost a few dummies today, but it was quite entertaining and definitely more fun than first-aid training should be. Then dinner time!
Sending love to everyone back home!
Until next time 🙂