Location: Peter Island, BVI
This morning, we had our last final exam, the basic seamanship final. It was difficult, but I am sure we all did well, and it is great to have finally finished all of our academic work. Now we can relax! After our exam, we watched Elf, the movie, and made lots of holiday cookies. Even though it’s not Christmas, we are celebrating it ahead of time on Ocean Star. We also celebrated Caroline’s birthday today because her birthday is two days after the end of our trip, so we decided to give her an Ocean Star birthday because she deserves two birthdays. After our movie, the other divemasters and I led a couple of people each on a dive in a reef here at Peter Island, which was for our Divemaster certification. We saw an old anchor at the bottom with a lot of coral growth on it and a bunch of cool fish! After that, we had dinner and then went on an amazing night dive 70 feet deep. We saw a big octopus changing colors from blue to brown and the biggest crab I have ever seen! When we went to the surface for our 3-minute safety stop, we all turned off our lights and waved our hands around to see the bioluminescence, which is caused by a chemical reaction in certain phytoplankton; they use it to distract predators, but it looks like bursting blue sparks in the water.