Livin' the Dream: Dolphin Cove Internship!: First day off!

Well, I have had a great first 5 days working at Dolphin Cove so far, and today was my first day off! Even though it was nice to sleep in, I still wanted to be at work lol! I just love seeing the dolphins everyday and learning more and more about training. This week I got cleared on even more tasks and I'm almost finished with the phase 1 stage (there are three phases I need to be cleared on), which is very exciting. I am now cleared on more sanitary duties, and I have even started being cleared on some of the husbandry tasks that I am allowed to assist the trainers with. The way things work around the facility is getting much easier and I am getting more familiar with the schedule every day now. I am really enjoying myself, and I am still so excited for what more awaits this summer!!

For my day off today I got some cleaning done around my place and finally finished unpacking haha. Then, this afternoon I went diving again!! I went diving with one of my friends, Lizzie, who was actually my intern when I studied abroad last summer in Turks and Caicos. She now is working at a dive shop here called Ocean Divers. All of the staff and interns at Dolphin Cove get to dive at Ocean Divers for free which is awesome, so I'm definitely going to take advantage of that this summer.

Lizzie took me out on my first deep dive today, we went down to 92ft. We first hit the famous dive site here called the Spiegel Grove. It is an artificial wreck that was placed here for recreational diving back in 2002. Fun fact: it was originally placed on its side but a hurricane that hit in 2005 was powerful enough to completely flip it right side up! It is actually only off by a few degrees to being perfectly straight upward, that is AMAZING! The dive site is way below 100ft and the fact that a wave could flip this GIANT ship upwards just astonishes me. Anyway, back to my dive. I saw a small spotted eel, lots of fish, a few barracuda, and an ENORMOUS (probably over 100 lbs.) grouper that was just hanging out on the side of the ship. Lizzie has dove this site many times so she knows her way around, and she even brought me in through the vessel and I was actually inside part of the ship. She brought me in and out of some doorway areas, it was so cool! The only thing is inside of the ship some of the areas were very dark and we didn't have lights on us, so that kind of creeped me out lol!

The next dive we went to was a site called the Wreck of Benwood. This site is actually a natural wreck, however, a hurricane that hit had really thrown various parts of the ship all over the place so there are pieces of it scattered surrounding the main part of the ship. This ship was no where near as big as the ship at the Spiegel Grove, but there was a lot more life there. The coral was stunning as well, there was a lot of different sorts of brain coral. We saw a moray eel swim right in front of us, a large crab, and even a nurse shark! We got about 4 ft. away from the shark and then it swam away from us. There were all kinds of other fish that we saw and I took a ton of pictures of both dive sites so go look at my facebook! :)

The rest of my evening I spent with Lizzie and some of her friends she introduced me to at a famous restaurant here called Sharky's. I had a great time meeting new people and I even became friends with a lot of the staff that works at Ocean Divers! Tomorrow I have a quiz on the facility and some of the frequently asked questions from visitors. So tonight I'm just going to relax in bed and study until I fall asleep, which will probably be very soon lol. Diving makes you exhausted!!!

Okay, this time I REALLY promise I will get some pictures of my work and maybe even some for the dolphins for the next time I blog. However, I do have some good ones from my dives today. Good night my friends!! :)