Today marks our first day on Middle Caye! Breakfast is back at 7:00 AM, which surprisingly doesn’t feel that early anymore. We started the day with a morning practice dive, trying out our snorkel gear in the ocean for the first time. Whatever happened in between the first time snorkeling in the Rec pool and now must’ve been a miracle, because I felt so much more comfortable snorkeling in the ocean this time.

We swam out to the nearest two patch reefs, both to get comfortable traversing through the ocean and to get the opportunity to start looking for wildlife. We saw a queen conch, some bonefish, parrotfish, and some purple fan corals!

After lunch we went for our first real snorkel, to a patch reef called the Aquarium. There were so many cool fish, including a resting nurse shark, a stingray, schools of various parrotfish, damselfish, and a ton of blue tangs.

As for groupers, there were a couple of red hinds, and although not true groupers, we saw a couple harlequin basslets too.

It was a super cool experience as I’ve never seen a coral reef with my own two eyes, and the amount of fish hiding throughout the reef was insane. Everywhere I looked there would be something cool to see, and I’m really excited to find more!

Ian C