Day 56: Little Cayman, and other things

Group Picture from Costa Rica

Tomorrow we have . . . a day off. A WHOLE day off, no lectures, no 4 hour hikes, no mandatory anything. The very first (and last) day off of the whole FSP. Wheee.

We turned in our first paper from here today, about the corky sea finger, a soft coral species. It was a pretty good project. Now I'm in the process of trying to pick a topic for the next one, which is also the last one. In 10 days, I'll be heading home. I think it will probably go pretty quickly.

I'm going to be sad to leave here. The marine life is so amazing. There are these adorable fish that are yellow with a blue-purple back (juvenile Beaugregories), who swim up and look at you when you're snorkeling. There are huge lobsters, the biggest I've ever seen in my life (one walked on my fin the other night while I was snorkeling). One of the species of goby is very pale, basically transparent, and hangs out right on top of the sand. I've attempted to befriend a lot of them while snorkeling and scuba diving (only semi-successful so far). There's another species of goby that lives in sponges. They are the "cleaner gobies," and when a large fish such as a grouper or barracuda (or Henri, our dive master) visits the sponge, they rush out and clean, even swimming into the mouth and cleaning around the teeth. There are stingrays, and fish such as Bar Jacks or Queen Triggerfish ride on their backs and eat little critters that they stir up while swimming. There are Fairy Basslets, tiny fish with bright purple heads and bright yellow tails that swim upsidedown under coral overhangs. And there are Blue Tangs and Parrotfish and Moray Eels and a ton of others, and I absolutely love watching them all.