Pictures NOW POSTED--the internet has been spotty!
After another great breakfast, we started off going south of San Pedro to the mangroves. While we were here, we saw a variety of different fish, invertebrates, birds, and even some jellyfish. It was very cool being able to swim up into the roots of the mangroves and see fish below and crabs and other invertebrates above rooting themselves above the water. While inside a root system we found a batfish that we were able to pick up and hold in our hands.
After the mangroves we made our way to shark ray alley, where a conch fisherman that has been grandfathered in, was cleaning his catch of the day. We saw many Bermuda Chubs, Horse-eye Jacks, Seargent Majors, Southern Stingrays, Nurse Sharks, and even a Loggerhead sea turtle that were feeding on the leftover conch. This site was considered a conch graveyard as the ocean floor was covered in hundreds of dead conch shells that have been piling up for years. After getting lots of pictures with the nurse sharks and the loggerhead sea turtle we went for an adventure through the alley in search of more sharks and rays!
Once done with our adventure through shark ray alley, we made our way down to the Hol Chan channel. Here we swam over a 70-foot-wide channel, saw a few sharks, swam in schools of French Grunts, and came face to face with a green moray eel (below). We started out at the south end of the channel and made our way down the edge following the reef face towards the drop off. We crossed the channel over to the northern side where we saw an underwater reef cave. We continued back west bound which is when we found the moray eel hiding in a little cave. Our guide lured it out allowing us to get a great view of the eel. We continued on and saw a few sea anemones, a sand dollar, sea egg, and a even a dogfish snapper.
With a chaotic start for the last snorkel of the night, and some great pizza we adventured off for the first time on the Goliath. Once at the reef and all settled in with our dive lights we went off into the dark sea. We saw lots of nocturnal fish, spiny lobsters, sea cucumbers, rays, and even a spotted moray eel. Our guide was able to show us the bioluminescent dinoflagellates (see below) by turning off all of our lights and stirring up the turtle grass! After many attempts of holding an octopus, we called it a night and came back to land for a good nights rest.