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BAHAMAS - FIELD UPDATES - WEEK 5
The Week that Was…
Monday, Nov. 6th – Sunday, Nov. 12th
By Lloyd Fallesen and Heather Graham
Monday, we learnt about Emergency First Response, which is always nice to know when keeping people alive in emergencies! We also picked from a hat the character that we had to dress up as on Saturday night – the theme was going to be ‘Superheroes’… of course we had all put the names INTO the hat too, so I wasn’t surprised to find the rather strange ‘Super… GLUE!’ as my role!
Tuesday was a good day for diving and some of us had fish tests while the rest of us continued practicing identification with fish pointing sessions. I’m getting excellent at letting people know what I’ve seen; playing invisible trombones to signal a trumpet fish… and you should see what we do when we see a Yellowtail Damsel (aka ‘DISCO-FISH!’)
Unfortunately, some very bad weather kept us from diving on Wednesday morning, so we kept busy with coral lectures until the rain broke and we managed to fit some diving in. We more than made up for it on Thursday, with fantastic weather, we managed to fit four dives into one day! We are now practicing belt survey techniques and learning to juggle Surface Marker Buoys, slates, lines, fish identification, watching our depth and timing and navigating all at once between just two of us! Needless to say, after four dives, the weekly quiz night was postponed due to a communal feeling of general knackeredness!
More great dives on Friday, followed by an afternoon camp clean. Everyone is forming muscles from carting sand to and fro, clearing branches from pathways and scrubbing the Greenforce van until it shines like a diamond (or something less grimy at least!). All our hard work is rewarded each Saturday with pancakes for breakfast (my highlight of the week) and not one but two fun dives! Awesome! First we went to Paul’s Wall, where we saw a Black Tip Reef shark cruising around, then after that we went to the Amphitheatre.
In the evening we all went over to Pigeon Cay on the boat and had a birthday-cum-leaving party for Ed, complete with Barbeque and Barbie themed party hats (don’t ask). After that it was back to camp to don costumes and get the party started. There were some REALLY weird costumes at that party! I’m not even sure if we can show you the pictures! Too strange and embarrassing! On the good side, Ed got a birthday cake, which we all ‘helped’ him to eat, and then partied into the early hours.
That just leaves Sunday, and to be honest, you need it just to recover! But the sun and the sea help you relax just a TINY bit!!
