Location: Muskmelon Bay, Guana Island
Hi, it’s Sam. This morning, we unfortunately woke up to say an emotional goodbye to one of our fellow members, Griffin, who will be greatly missed. A little while later, Lindsay and Maeve ventured off to their staff meeting. Even though we were still feeling down, our chefs started cooking up some breakfast (thank you, Roman, for sacrificing your Crunch chocolate bar to include in our delicious pancakes). In remembrance of Griffin, we hung his PFD on the lines at the top of the boat. Once we finally finished dishy pit and got our staff members back, we got on our way to Shark Planes. Once we were moored and woke everyone up from their naps, we started to set up our dive gear. As we jumped in one by one, we could already tell this dive would be good because we didn’t have to dodge any jellyfish. Once we descended, we saw the amazing artwork that took place below the surface. Artists shaped planes to look like all sorts of sharks. Ironically, while we were down there, we saw four grey nurse sharks. We also saw assortments of stingrays; I think a few of us even saw some small grouper. Once we finished up the dive, we all put on our PFDs and were ready to set sail once again. While on our way, we enjoyed some warm chicken ramen.
Once we anchored in Musk Melon, everyone jumped in the water with our fins and snorkels to snorkel where we would later have our night dive. Once everyone checked out the dive site, Mason started chefing up our dinner, and everyone else started setting up their dive gear. While waiting for dinner, Caitlin and I found a strawberry-kiwi juice that Griffin left in the fridge. It had turned into a frozen slushy and made for a delicious treat before dinner. A little after the chickpea tikka masala was served, we saw the amazing sight of Roman, Alden, and Lindsay on the dinghy with all our laundry. We quickly stopped eating and all hopped up for our bags. After dinner was scarfed down and the dishes were put away, we had a short briefing about our upcoming dive. After the briefing, everyone started gearing up. As they started gearing up, we all noticed some unwanted visitors in the water.
A huge swarm of brown jellyfish filled the water around our boat! Maeve realized these were not very safe conditions, and quickly made the decision to dinghy everyone over to “Why Knot” to dive off their boat instead. The night dive was a great success with no nasty jellies spotted and a lucky look at a loggerhead turtle that swam beneath us. We completed our skill of having our torches pressed against our bodies to cut the lights for 3 minutes, and saw some twinkling bioluminescence surrounding us as we swished the water. And that was the conclusion of our Night Diver Specialty! (A quick thank you to Lindsay because we have had multiple problems with our heads today, and he has done the brave, disgusting service of unclogging everything. We are very grateful to have everything working again.
Goodnight!