We had a wonderful, fantastic, and glorious day today under the waves. We again had the blue sky and turquoise water weather. It was a little more windy, though. That wind made some swells on the way to the dive sites. Our troopers didn’t even bat an eye! They wanted to dive!
Our first dive today was at the Willaurie wreck sites. This was our deepest dive yet. We were down at around 50 feet for 30 minutes or more. The students are really accomplished at equalizing. The depth didn’t even phase them. There were three sunken boats which were awesome. One was a huge water barge that was about 200 feet long. It was awesome to see the kids cruise around the hull.
Then we motored to a spot beyond One-Tree-Island to a dive site called Elkhorn Garden. It was awesome! There was a ton of life on this shallow dive. Because we stayed at about 20 feet we could stay down for about 55 minutes. We saw another barracuda, another ray, and a pufferfish!!! (We also saw a ton of tangs, angels, sergeant majors, and parrotfish.) From a distance, I thought I saw a tarpon but was told later that it was a grouper. We also worked on our backflips under the water and off the back of the boat. It was an amazing day!
After a great lunch at the Inn we went to the beach for some relaxing hair braiding and snorkeling. We took a crew out to our beach’s mini-reef to see a ton of fish. I bet there were a thousand fish swimming at our feet. So much fun! I saw my first black spine urchin and a big black durgon.