Dolphins

Done with finals. Directed research starts tomorrow, so I've been taking up time wandering the beaches, playing some whiffle ball, playing with Tomas (the cat thats been hanging out here), trying to build a raft, and lots of random fun things. Like scuba diving.

This morning bright and early I hopped on the bouncy rubber zodiac and headed off to dive the arch. Micah, the intern driving the boat was gunning the motor super fast and we actually got some clear feet of air off of some waves. It was a really fun ride. We were crusing next to the 23, a flat bottomed skiff, when all of a sudden there was a pod of dolphins swimming with us. Ricardo, our dive safety officer, was in our boat and told us to go faster, the dolphins wanted to play with us. They swam with of both of our boats, staying right in front of the bow. I was worried that we would run them over, but they could move so fast, every now and then, one would spiral away or dart ahead really quickly. They were jumping out of the water as well. I was lying leaning over the front of the boat, so I was literally inches away from them. Needless to say everyone was so excited. When we reached our dive sites and jumped in the water they lost interest, and we started our dives.

I don't have any pictures to post yet, but here is a video taken during the dolphin encounter. Sorry for all the loud screaming, but I mean, most of people here are girls so, you know how it goes. It was taken by someone on the other boat, but that means you get a discovery channel chase cam view of our boat. I am on the zodiac, the red boat, and I am lying on the front end, closest to the camera when you see the boat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxzi3w8nzFw


I dove at this site called The Arch, which is this huge arch about 50 feet down, that you can swim under. There were a few really big fish hanging out at the arch when we reached it, a nassau grouper, mutton snapper, and black jack to be exact. There were all sorts of crazy sponges and hydroids growing on the underside of the arch. The air bubbles I exhaled caught themselves in little pockets on the rock overhead, it looked like liquid mercury or something. Makes me want to try cave diving. I saw a lot of gramma loretos as well, they are a really cool fish that orient themselves based on the surface they are swimming next to, so when they are under an overhang they are swimming upside down. We had an excellent dive, the 40 minutes went by way too quickly, it seemed like our 3 minute safety stop came up way too quickly and then we were back on the boat again, heading back to the center.

On a sobering note, one of my roommates came up from a dive later in the day bleeding out of his ear, we aren't sure if he ruptured the ear drum or not, he went to the island clinic but they basically told him to come back tomorrow. He probably won't get to dive the rest of the trip though which is really unfortunate.

I'm about to go wander the town for the evening. Miss everyone back home, especially my awesome little siblings. Signing off.