No shirt, no shoes, no problem!

So, I had my first experience with underwater media yesterday. I spent the morning studying since half the class was out taking their coral ID test. After lunch me and the rest of the people working on the coral reef film project jumped in one of the boats and laid anchor off HDL. I snorkeled with a weight belt, which was challenging but let me dive faster and get stable shots while I was underwater. I was just buoyant enough for the tip of my snorkel to be over the surface of the water when I hovered vertically at the surface. We got our one "acting" scene filmed and out of the way at first. It was basically me and a buddy swimming up to some coral, him reaching to touch it and me grabbing his hand away. One of my better performances. Our objective was to find damaged/bleached coral, or trash and other negative human impacts. Thankfully, we had to look hard and long to find things to film in that department. I was able to get some awesome shots of a wall of sea fans blowing in the current, and some huge staghorn coral formations. One of the first things we saw was this gorgeous spotted eagle ray. Its really unfortunate that I hadn't gotten used to the belt or the camera yet, but here is a link to a video I took of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVpcG_9JSqs

 I was using a red filter to get the ideal color at about 20 feet, which is where the eagle ray was, but it will look pretty red at the surface. Its shaky while I am diving and surfacing. Also saw one of these little guys that I hadn't seen before, a baby trunkfish.



After being out for about two hours we came back to the center where I rehydrated and then grabbed my dive slate and headed right back to HDL, where I took my Corals and invertebrates test. We actually saw a golden crinoid, it is an echinoderm that I haven't seen before, but it was on the test. Beautiful, fairly sure I messed up the scientific name though. Davidaster something or other. The test was over soon enough and I was back at the center for 4:20 snack. They actually put out afternoon snack for us at 4:20 every day. Everyone was in a great mood, it was finally the weekend. (Test was moved to Saturday, replacing a recreational dive, since weather messed up the schedule) Most of us hit up the south caicos nightlife after dinner. This isn't that big of a place and so there aren't many options for places to go out to, but I swung by a good selection of them last night. We swung by Roosters, the only pool hall on the island, then went to Chicken bar, which serves tasty fried chicken and fries from a window on the side. We visited the only hotel on the island, they give out free conch fritters and chicken wings towards the end of the night, and they have a pool. There is also the only club on the island: Bayside Ballers.

I'm just taking a pretty easy sunday now, uploading some pictures, doing some reading. Its the little things here that make the time special, just taking the time to enjoy them. Even doing my laundry earlier this afternoon was great. Just sitting off the dock with my feet in the cool water, with the hot tropical sun on my back and a light breeze on my face, washing clothes wasn't too bad at all. I'm getting way too used to this lifestyle, I love not having to shower, or wear anything but board shorts. Shirts are just very oppressive now. Also I'm probably not going to wear shoes when I get back home... just sayin.