Location: Malolo, Fiji
This morning began with some deck workouts and 48 fried eggs; thank you, Olivia and Lainey, for your sous chef dedication! We then gathered on deck and learned about how to handle ship emergencies. We will continue to learn more as we go! The highlight of the morning had to be the fire hose; many of us fulfilled our firefighting dreams when we took turns fighting imaginary fires (and imaginary pirates) off the beam of the ship! Next, our open water candidates learned how to set up our scuba kits and use our BCDs! We practiced setting them up multiple times until we were confident. We’d be doing it all ourselves by the afternoon! Before lunch, we had time to GET AQUATIC!! The best jumps off the deck had to be Olivia’s first backflips, Beck’s “cooked noodle” jump, and Sidney’s shrimp jump. We reveled in some relaxation time on the martingales and spotted some silvery baitfish and a sea turtle!
For lunch, we enjoyed Gabe’s ramen, complete with noodles, fish broth, seaweed, mushrooms, green onions, and the most important ingredient: loveactually, fire. We learned how to unroll the tarp for some shade and ate our ramen with a beautiful view of the sandbar we were soon to explore! During clean-up, there were many tunes sung, and many laughs heard, and the chaos felt like old friends at a summer camp!
With our calm, sunny afternoon, certified divers explored the sandbar from land! They found many a sand dollar, an anemone, and even a sea snake (a banded sea krait, to be precise). Unfortunately, Maverick learned of the snake’s venomous qualities only after he chased it for a picture. Fortunately, it’s small, it’s not THAT venomous, and the snake didn’t bite anyone, so we’re good! While certified divers made friends with the local wildlife, open water candidates tried their hands at scuba diving for the first time in the shallows of the sandbar! Despite the water that was swallowed, the equipment that leaked, and the sting pixies that caught us by surprise, we had a blast! Two of our trusty divemasters in training (DMITs, as they prefer to be called), Beck and Lainey, were there to help us newbies with questions! It was a little cold, but we saw many fun little fishes and some cool coral! We learned some basic skills, like how to recover our regulators, how to communicate using hand signals, how to clear our masks when they fill with water, and how to switch from a snorkel to a regulator! After learning some diver tows on the swim back, we finally dismantled our gear and took some much-appreciated ocean showers (AKA “showers with friends!”).
For dinner, we enjoyed Gabe’s and Emily’s wonderful tofu + beef + rice dinner, brought to us from the streets of Santa Clara, California. As Gabe so passionately puts it, tofu is special for its own inherent qualities and need not solely be a substitute for meat. Hence, Ma Po Tofu was cooked up for an eager crowd. After a nice clean-up with 90s dance jams, action movie soundtracks, and the song of the summer, “28”, we cleaned up the deck, rolled up the tarp, and stowed our dinghies (one of which was finally fixed today!). Before nightly anchor watches began, we gathered for an introduction to our oceanography class. Exciting things are in store for tomorrow, and we can’t wait to tackle our next adventure!