Hey readers! We’ve been here for two wonderful, ocean filled weeks. Each day has been packed with activity, but the time has flown more quickly than anyone expected. The weather has been (mostly) fabulous, and I think all of us would be more than happy to stay for a while longer. Today, the class had our last, and deepest dive, to the shipwreck Aguila. This ship was sunk here purposefully in an attempt to give corals a new place to settle and grow, but it’s mostly used as a diving site now. This dive went down to around 110 ft, around 30 ft deeper than we had dove before. Most of the color in light is lost as you go deeper in the water, so the area around the ship was mostly a deep green and blue. Large groupers and snappers swim in the area around the wreck, and arrow crabs scavenge on the edges of the ships. In the white sandy bottom surrounding the ship, small garden eels poke their heads out of holes in the sand, retreating as you swim above. Overall it was a really cool dive to be able to participate in and being able to do it again would absolutely be worth staying on the island for another few days.

After the morning dive, we snorkeled in two locations until lunchtime. The first place was called man-o-war key, named after the magnificent frigatebird, locally known as a man-o-war bird, and thankfully not (as I and several other people had assumed), after the very dangerous jellyfish the Portuguese man-o-war. The mangroves were beautiful, with tangled roots reaching underwater, forming a dense and tangled mat of fibers, an important nursery for juvenile fish, seahorses, and other small invertebrates and crustaceans. We saw tons of tiny versions of fish we had seen out on the reef, including half-inch-long sergeant majors (usually 6-7inches), baby bar jacks, and even some small four-spot butterfly fish. After a half hour or so in the mangroves, we headed out a little deeper to a sandy area between the mangroves and the barrier reef. This area was characterized by turtle and manatee grass beds, and patch reefs. Since we were outside the marine park during this snorkel trip, we were allowed to collect organisms to look at closer on the boat. We saw a nurse shark, lots of healthy corals and anemones, and even an enormous, four feet in diameter stingray. Once we got back to the boat, we had collected a variety of critters, including a West Indian sea egg (a type of sea urchin that looks like a pin cushion), a juvenile and adult cushion sea star, a red snapping shrimp, lots of small hermit crabs, a flamingo tongue snail, and a milk conch. It was really fun being able to look at things closer on the boat, and get to actually hold and touch some of the organisms, since we weren’t allowed to do so in the protected marine park.

Then, this afternoon we spent another couple of hours in West End, doing our last minute souvenir shopping, before coming back for a last round of paddleboarding in the lagoon. Members of the Luther swimming team managed to find a way to practice even in Roatan by towing a line of paddleboards behind them! We’ll definitely be sad to go, it’s been a fantastic trip.

Finally, some plans for tomorrow. We’ll have a pretty late start, eating breakfast at 8am (instead of our usual 6:45 or 7), and we’ll head to the airport around 11:00am, for our flight leaving at 2:00. We’ll fly to Miami, and then on to Chicago, where we’ll take another four hour bus ride back to Luther, arriving at the wonderful and exceptional hour of 3:30 am Sunday morning. We’ll let you know when we’ve arrived back in Chicago, and again when we’re safe in Luther. We’ll be sorry to leave, but it will be nice to be back after so long away.