Ashton Abroad: Day 17

I thought things were going to wind down after Diving Boot Camp. I was wrong.

We have 8:30 class almost every day and class goes until about 18:00. (That's 6pm, Americans. We operate on military time here.) We also have tons of reading; last night was over 100 pages of diving physiology and coral reef structure. Now we have to have our independent research project figured out by tomorrow, with five sources in our annotated bibliography, and we have to present it to the class tomorrow--and we haven't actually met with our advisors yet. Not that I'm complaining, it still beats Hopkins. Fortunately I think I've got my idea pretty well figured out and my bibliography is done, but everyone is stressed out.

My project is (hopefully) going to be on the peacock flounder. They're flat little fish that swim along the bottom and blend into the sand and rock by changing color. I want to test their camouflage capabilities by capturing them and testing them on surfaces with different patterns and colors.

Yep, pretty ugly.

Peacock flounders are ugly! They have both of their eyes on the left side of their body because they lie flat on their right side. They start life like normal fish, but as they get older the right eye migrates to the left side of the body. They're pretty abundant, and I hope I'll be allowed to catch them! (Bonaire has very strict laws about what fish you can catch, so I have to get approval from the marine park director.)

In other news, we had two very cool dives on Friday at different ends of the island, Andrea II in the north and 18 Palms farther south. 18 Palms might be my new favorite site! Saturday we had off, so we all just lazed around.

On the way to Andrea II in the Divemobile!

It's a cozy ride.

Sunday was a full day of class, including a dive in the afternoon and rescue skills that we need to be certified Rescue Divers. Trevor is my partner, and he is HEAVY. I was freaking out during my entire victim part, because I kept getting dunked underwater. (I've been a little skittish in the water since the near-drowning incident at Newport Beach over the summer.) I was so stressed and tense after that dive that immediately afterwards I went for a run, then had a glass of wine and chocolates. I felt much better after all that.

On Monday we finally had a relaxing day: a few hours of class in the morning, and a movie in the afternoon. The movie was The Cove, which is a documentary about the yearly dolphin massacres in Japan. Every year thousands of dolphins are herded into a cove in Taiji, where dolphins are sold to trainers for parks around the world at $150,000 a pop, and those who aren't selected are brutally killed. Japan is one of the few nations in the world who still pursue whaling, and kill thousands of whales every year for 'research purposes'--except that all that meat ends up in Japanese grocery stores. Dolphin meat is not considered good to eat, and most people in Japan don't consider dolphins food. In addition, dolphins meat contains around 2000ppm of mercury--the current USA limit for mercury content in fish is 1ppm. The movie is actually very interesting, and seems like more of a spy-movie than a documentary since the film crew is doing everything illegally. I recommend it, even though it's very sad. In one particular scene, a bleeding baby dolphin is seen struggling to swim up for air until he finally disappears under the blood-red water.

Anyway, enough of the sad stuff! Here's the most recent pictures I took while snorkeling.