Thursday 14th October

Laura’s top five!

1. Diving this morning. The deepest part was almost 24 metres! We swam inside a deep hole and came out in a dark cave. On this dive I found two sleeping Tawny Nurse sharks, a black tip reef shark, giant turtle, a female turtle giving another turtle a piggy back, lots of anemone fish and a huge Bump-headed wrasse!
2. Going snorkelling. I really enjoyed just floating on the surface over the coral gardens today. In fact, I went snorkelling three times! It was very relaxing and there were so many fish that came up to say hello all the way up to your mask! Amazing to see giant schools of trevally swimming about.
3. Being a boat scientist. Today I got to go out in the research boat. I conducted plankton tows where we sent out a huge net (that looked like a wind sock at an airport) that gathered all the plankton in the water. Then we bagged it, recorded data like the time and location to process in the lab. We also measured the current by dropping an orange (yes, the fruit!) into the water and recording the starting point using GPS and the end point after 5 minutes using GPS.
4. The beautiful weather. Today the sun was out for the first time since arriving last Saturday. It was wonderful to sit on the beach in the sun and scoot about in the boat under the blue sky on azure water. Amazing!
5. Seeing two mantas feeding on the surface. Although we only saw them for a short time from the research boat, maybe less than a minute, it was nice to know they are around! I still haven’t seen any since my second dive when I saw three from a distance. Tomorrow morning is my last dive before I leave the island Saturday afternoon. You are not allowed to fly straight after diving, you have to leave at least 12 hours before you can go up to altitude. So I really hope they come out to play soon.

That’s it for now! Catch you with my last update tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for mantas!

Cheers!

Miss Q.