by Chris Miller, BV volunteer, Belize
We are now in our last week at Bacalar Chico and we are all so sad that our time here is nearly over. Over the past few weeks we have had an amazing time with fantastic weather conditions allowing us to go ahead with almost every single dive. Therefore, we are way ahead of schedule with all of our surveys which is great and has also allowed us to fit in some extra fun dives … including a couple of naked ones (in the name of science!) to celebrate Sarah’s 300th dive.
Looking at lionfish
We have also all tried eating underwater which is actually possible, we all took Snickers bars down and ‘enjoyed’ them on the seabed – there may have been slightly more salt in them then it stated on the packet.
As well as the fun dives and surveys we have also held a few Lionfish hunting dives which have all been extremely successful with one dive spearing a total of over 30 Lionfish. The Lionfish were then used to understand what food they are primarily eating before being prepared and cooked by our fantastic chef Desi. They tasted amazing!
Out on the boat
There have been several encounters with interesting sea life including a massive nurse shark resting on the seabed which was by far one of the biggest ever sighted here at Bacalar Chico. Another frequent sighting has been a very keen Loggerhead turtle that was a little over friendly to some of the divers – obviously confusing them with one of its own kind. Big Al had a stroke of luck on his first dive doing his open water PADI training when he saw a West Indian Manatee, not many people get to see something that cool on their first dive.
When we haven’t been hard at work diving with the sharks, rays and turtles we have either been relaxing in our hammocks, partying, playing games, playing volleyball, cutting each other’s hair terribly or listening to Alex sing beautifully well written songs about his undying love for Zora.
Life here is awesome … just a shame its nearly over.
Getting ready to go on a dive
