Day 109

My last two weeks on Bonaire were SO busy!  One whole week was devoted to publishing Physis, our in-house research journal.  It's not peer-edited work so it's not totally legit, but we worked hard on it and I think it's something we're all proud of.  You can take a gander yourself by clicking here.  But Physis didn't stop us from diving, and I saw a bunch of awesome sites that week, including a site at the very southern tip of the island and two far up north!

Foureye Butterflyfish!

Fuzzy coral.

Basket Star!  This one is all curled up on itself.

Our last week was taken up by three things: tests, camping, and diving.  We had exams on Monday and Tuesday, so on Tuesday night we packed up and headed to Klein Bonaire to go camping again.  It wasn't quite as good as last time because there were lots of bugs, but we got some good tanning time in!  On Thursday we dove at Alice in Wonderland and Oil Slick, neither of which I'd ever been to before, and they were both awesome.  Chris spotted a coney at the end of the dive, then realized that it was shadow-stalking with an octopus!  Very cool!

Our very last dive was on Friday morning, because you need at least 12 hours to get all the nitrogen out of your system before you can fly.  (Ever noticed how water bottles expand when you go up in a plane?  Imagine nitrogen bubbles doing that in your bloodstream and tissues.  You don't want that happen.)  We did a drift dive from Angel City to the Hilma Hooker, the shipwreck we did earlier in the semester.  We followed a chain at Angel City all the way to where the reef ended, and there was the Hilma Hooker looming in front of us!  It was a cargo ship back in the day, so it's fairly large.  We went inside the shipwreck this time!  We entered a hole, swam around some things and came out above; the ship lies on its side so if it were upright, both holes would have been at the same height.  It was really cool, and I can't wait to try shipwreck diving in Michigan!

Bonaire was amazing, and I'm incredibly lucky to have spent almost four months there.  I had so many new and unique experiences, made friends I would never have met elsewhere, and learned more about diving and ecology than I could have imagined.  I can't wait to continue diving, and hopefully I'll be an instructor someday in the near future!

I'm home all summer (yay!), but then it's off to Australia in July and the blog will pick up again when I get there.  Thanks for keeping up with me!

Cheers,
Ashton