Wednesday morning we all got up at our normal time and put together the boat for the day. Because of all the engine troubles, they wanted to lighten the load on the boat so only one of the volunteers could go. David really wanted to go so we let him. I was fine with it because I didn’t really want to be the only volunteer on the boat (then you don’t really have anyone to joke around with.) We hung out around the house; my stupid internet refused to work again (I don’t know what the issue is but its bothering me)
Dave came back saying the sea was kinda rough. We packed up the boat and headed out for the second trip and realized the sea was VERRRRY wavy. The boat was rocking like crazy. We only had 4 clients on this trip, which was nice because we could sit inside the cabin area and we had a lot more room to move around. So we got out to the anchor site and the waves were insane. We had only been there 10 minutes but I was really starting to feel seasick. I had decided to do data that day but then Julia offered to let me in the cage. I headed to the front of the boat to put on my wetsuit. They are always hard to squeeze into but that day I could barely stand up while trying to put on one which made it even harder. And to complicate things I was starting to feel a lot seasick. Related to that, as soon as I got my wetsuit on my body was crazy overheating and I had to keep one hand in the bucket of seawater we keep to rinse off diving masks in. Finally I was situated and was able to hop into the cage. The water felt absolutely amazing and really helped to cool me back down to a normal temperature. Also, as soon as I hit the water my seasickness vanished. That was really nice. We waited for a few minutes before the sharks all came. It was crazy, we ended up seeing 11 different sharks and at one point there were four around the boat all taking turns with the bait. The waves were big enough that sometimes half the cage would be out of the water and at other times all of the cage would be under the water.
It was very exciting to be in the cage. The sharks there were all very comfortable getting close. We had two that ran directly into the bars; one near my hand and then one that came directly at Emma and Mike and actually bonked his nose into the cage. He swam back and shook his head like he was confused. When I developed my cheapy underwater camera I had some fabulous pictures!
Later that night we all went to Joys, a restaurant. We ended up meeting up with the Marine Dynamics group for a fabulous dinner. Afterwards, most everyone went home but me, Emma, Josephine, and the boys stayed for a few drinks. We came back to the house and chatted for a while (apparently loudly because the neighbor across the street said we kept her with Emma’s laugh. Whoops.) And headed off to bed.
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