Day 43

After staying up until 4am writing my entire research proposal last night, I slept in this morning and had Trix for breakfast.  (They still have the shapes here!  In the US they're now just colored cereal balls.)  It was Grace's birthday and she wanted to go windsurfing at Jibe City, but I couldn't go because I wouldn't be back in time for my dinner with the Zales.  Instead I went snorkeling to get more ideas for my research project, and saw tons more cool stuff today!

These are the orange cup corals that I'm doing my research project on:

The fuzzy ones are feeding with their tentacles! 

These colonies are growing on a dock support.

 Then I found a porcupine puffer fish under a rock!  They're about 18 inches long and super cute!

Who couldn't love this face?

My, what big eyes you have!

 I also found more big scorpionfish.  They're hard to see because their camouflage is so good!  (Click to make them bigger and easier to see.)

The tail is in the top left, eyeball in the bottom right.

See the eyeball smack dab in the middle?

I swam down to the Harbor Marina, which is a little dirty but has TONS of fish.

So many fish!

Queen Parrotfish, feeding on algae on shallow rocks.

Peacock flounder!  (Just a wee one.)

And the best part of my snorkel: the itty-bitty baby porcupine puffer fish right at the end!  I chased him into just a few inches of water to get better pictures, but then he got stuck because his little tail wasn't strong enough to swim against the waves!  I used my camera to very gently push him into deeper water so he could swim away.

This guy was about 5 inches long.

Awww!

Swimming away after his near-beaching experience.

A few hours later I walked down to the Sand Dollar resort to have dinner with the Zales.  My family is renting their condo, and they invited me over for dinner!  When I first arrived I thought they were speaking a foreign language, but it turned out they were just from the Bronx.  We had a lovely chicken dinner followed by delicious cookies, and they showed me their photographs and paintings.  The whole condo is full of their own work, including a huge diving-themed mural on the porch!  After dinner they took me out for ice cream and drove me home.  It was an excellent Saturday night!

And now for a test of something new: a video of the baby porcupine puffer!