Reflections from the Advanced Divers

Honduras has so far been an all around amazing experience.  The exposure to new culture, tastes, and habits has served as an exceptional and educational experience. Venturing down to 100ft below sea level is one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. The fish here are amazing and the reefs are huge.  You wouldn’t think a fish could be half yellow and half purple, as well as bright, but it can. In fact, that’s what Fairy Basslets look like and they’re my favorite fish. As I go I continue to recognize more fish, creatures, and coral. For instance during our deep dive this morning we saw Bipinnate Sea Plumes, which is a type of soft coral. Its depth is typically 45-180 ft and it’s common to South Florida, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean, which explains why we saw them. The greatest things about scuba diving for school is that while diving I recognize and understand what I’m looking at and am therefore able to see so much more.     From, CZ

            Roatan Honduras has been lots of fun. In the advanced dive group we have been working on skills the last couple of days in order to get certified. So far we have done a Peak Performance Buoyancy dive, a Navigation dive, a Deep dive at 110 feet, and tonight we’re going on a Night dive that everyone is looking forward to. We’ve seen lots of cool things including Reef Squids, Groupers, Lobsters, Jellyfish, and many more. It has been an all around great experience because we are exposed to different foods, a different culture, and new dive experiences all day, every day. Its kind of fun because when we do two dives in one day it feels like each one was on it’s own day. We are having lots of fun seeing and identifying different organisms underwater and also seeing cool things like geckos on land. On our Deep Dive today at the Aguila shipwreck we saw a yellow variation of Branching Tube Sponge. They are mostly found between twenty and eighty feet, and can be anywhere from six to eighteen inches in size. They inhabit coral reefs; often growing on walls, and are cool to see. I am looking forward to all the dives in the future and the things we will get to see.   From SO

Today we went on a deep dive today to a shipwreck called El Augila, a sunken cargo ship 107 feet down and the dive was amazing. The experiences that we are making now are ones I will never forget. The culture, the lifestyle, the people. All unforgettable.  I’m really glad that I got the opportunity to go to such an amazing place for my field study because I really like diving and I haven’t been out of the country before and I feel that this was an excellent place to do so.  This place seems to be on a whole different planet than the United States and so far I've really been enjoying it.

Black Grouper

·      Member of bass family

·      Black rectangle pattern with white in between

·      Range is from 30ft-100ft

·      We saw this one at 80ft

·      Larger fish 4ft long

·      Very curious fish

·      Harmless to humans

·    From TC

The organism in the picture is a Brown Garden Eel that the Advanced Open Water group saw at about 107 feet deep. In the picture there are two Garden Eels sticking their heads up from the sand. Besides seeing the two Brown Garden Eels, I saw several Yellowmouth Groupers, Queen Angelfish, Blue Tangs, Yellowtail Snappers, Caribbean Lobsters, Fairy Basslets, and several more. A lot of the fish we encountered were very social and curious, so it was easy to get a clear picture and idea of what they looked like so I could identify them later.  From SC