Started out the day with some good old community service. We went to a rocky beach on the other side of the island outside the reef crest to pick up trash and debris that’s washed ashore. It was actually quite depressing how much of it there was. I could pick any spot and sit down and spend over 30 minutes picking up trash only in arms’ reach. All of us were out there for an hour and picked up over 30 kgs of trash, yet I don’t know if we made a significant impact.

In the afternoon, we measured some coral. To get to them we had to run through the “mangroves of death” on half of the island. Adrienne and Scott calls it that because in past years it’s been completely infested with mosquitoes. Even though this year wasn’t bad at all I still got bit quite a bit. Saw a reef hermit crab today. They are different from the land hermit crabs thats all over the island, bigger too.

At night we went out for a night snorkel. Saw a lot of lobsters. There were a bunch of spiny lobsters out, more than I’ve ever seen before. Some of them were in pairs. I couldn’t tell if they were mating or fighting. They can shoot themselves so far with one flick of their tail, it’s super impressive. We also saw the elusive slipper lobster. It looked really weird, almost like a really large bug. Everyone turn off their dive lights for a bit. The darkness revealed all the bioluminescent animals hiding in the sea grass. It almost looked like a greenish static on a black screen. Really awesome.

-Randy