Monday, March 24, 2014

Saints in the Bahamas: Mrs. Myhre reports on our first day in San Salvador

After our first day and layover in Nassau we hopped back onto a small airplane with propellers and island hopped from one island to the next.  In less than an hour we were landing on San Salvador island.  We landed on an airstrip longer than the one at National Airport but with an airport that consisted of a single room and a trailer.  We hopped in the back of one of the research center's trucks and drove to our home for the next 6 days.


After lunch and a quick orientation with the center's director, we got on our gear and went for our first test swim with the snorkel gear in open waters.  The first test swim showed us that we need to: make sure to stick with our buddy, don't swim too far out, and swim with a dive flag. 


After learning from our mistakes we swam over a turtle grass bed and over a nearby reef.  The turtle grass bed didn't have much life for us to observe, but the reef had lots of species of fish and some great examples of brain and fan coral.  That was also a pretty degraded reef head.  Tomorrow we will head out to another reef head that has much more diversity.


1 comment:

Colleen McNeil said...

Your pictures look beautiful, particularly when compared to the snow outside in Alexandria today!