Day 10: Ocean fun comes to a close

    Today was a bittersweet day, as the end of our snorkeling adventures came to a close. We woke up to dark skies and flashes of light of a huge thunderstorm The rumbling of the skies was very entertaining as we ate our breakfast. It was such a display that we turned off the lights to watch the skies rumble and shake the ground with its awe-inspiring lightning. The rain didn't let up until close to noon, but luckily the thunder moved on elsewhere.

    Before going out to our last two snorkeling sites in the afternoon, we had time to work on our projects. Most people were working on the final posters for the presentation on Tuesday night. A few groups are also working on analyzing their data from the multiple days of collection we all had (Excel and R are very challenging). I'm also happy to report Randi and Maya are feeling better after catching a bit of a cold as mentioned in yesterday's blog. The cure of their sickness is probably attributed to our chef Dezesus' amazing soup he specially made for everyone who was feeling under the weather over the past few days. 

    Because of the copious amounts of rain that had fallen earlier in the morning, we shifted sites for our snorkel to Hospital Point and then Mangrove Island right next to STRI for better visibility. A quick aside- Hospital Point is named as such because in the 1900s there was a large hospital on the island where everyone with leprosy was sent to be isolated before they knew what caused it or how it spread. Once we got to Hospital Point we started exploring, and very quickly noticed the ~6in of rainwater on the top of the surface murking up the water, however, it started to clear up later. Luckily this site is one of the best in proximity to STRI in terms of species abundance. Tropical fish such as parrotfish, damselfish, angelfish, and surgeonfish swam all around us. We even bumped into a chainlink moray eel and a banded coral shrimp (below).

As the dive wrapped up, we saw one more small nurse shark to add to our surprisingly large list of shark encounters during our dives. This final shark was as if the reef was saying goodbye to all of us and giving us one last gift.

    The next and final dive site of our time here in Panama was Mangrove Island, where it was now our time to give back to Bocas by cleaning up the trash nestled in and around the mangroves. Because of the currents and the natural shape of mangrove roots, they tend to catch a lot of trash from boats and the shore. After 30 minutes we collected five whole bags worth of trash plus another bucket of the heavy items.

    Overall the day was successful as we were able to say our final goodbyes to the waters of Bocas Del Toro. Even though there is still work ahead our time here is coming to a close, and today made me think about how lucky I am to be here. Thank you Bocas, we'll miss you.

- Jack