Hello all!

Finally some pictures!

So an bit of an update...we almost finished up our data collection, we might have one more dive this afternoon, weather dependant of course. We'd be going out to the Blowout, which is a pretty far ride and it's windy, so it may be too rough today. But regardless, this means that it's time to start data crunching! Yay! We started this morning, and it's going to be quite an arduous undertaking. There's a lot of stuff to consider!

But no one wants to hear about that....my weekend was far more exciting.

Friday was our last dive at The Plane. It was a great dive, although nothing too exciting to speak of, just lots and lots and lots and lots of fish that we had to count. It's pretty overwhelming sometimes. We did see some pretty cool fish that we don't normally see on transects though. Friday night we had an invitational dinner with the government officials of TCI. It was really nice. Everyone got dressed up, or at least as dressed up as you can get here...haha. The food was great and we got to talk to some people we don't normally see around town, when we're just out and about.

Saturday started with a great snorkel at the reef just off Long Cay. The pictures are from it.

This is a shot of a princess parrotfish and an ocean surgeonfish. The parrotfish is the colorful one towards the bottom.

Finally finally finally got my eagle ray picture! He let me follow him around and take lots of pictures. He had me swimming in circles above him, probably just to laugh at me. This guy had probably about a 4ft wingspan.

Cute little Nassau grouper!

After the snorkel, we had lunch and community outreach. I was in the pool teaching swimming lessons, which really just means I was in the pool getting jumped on and clung to. It was a lot of fun though, the kids really enjoyed it. Saturday afternoon is spent doing one thing: laying on the beach. Annie, our dive master, takes us out to Long Cay every Saturday after outreach. We hang out and talk and tan. We saw a little lemon shark in the water on the way there. The water was so shallow its dorsal fin was sticking out of the water, Jaws style. It was pretty awesome. I tried to get some pictures, but it was too far away and didn't come out well.

Sunday started out way earlier than normal....5:20 to be exact. A group of us went to East Bay to watch the sunrise. It was gorgeous. It was really cloudy at first, but the sun finally broke through the clouds. We got back to the center around 8 and slept until brunch at 11. After brunch we headed back to East Bay. On the way there it started raining, so we stopping into the Cox development (the only hotel on the island) and played dominoes and ate french fries until the rain passed.

This week is mostly dedicated to data crunching and paper writing. Saturday we present all our research. We're having a lot of waterfront in the afternoon though, hopefully some turtling or a few dives. I'm also scheduled (weather dependent OF COURSE) to go on a night dive tomorrow, so hopefully that pans out!!