Like Ellery I had very little snorkel experience before Palmyra and it is quite the place to start. My first snorkel here was an attempt to track the bumphead parrot fish. As I sputtered and swallowed salt water and felt my eyes burn from the water that had leaked into my mask, I had a hard time seeing how anyone could want to do this for fun. As it turned out, it's not always such a struggle, and in fact, I wasn't inherently horrible at snorkeling -- my mask was broken. My next two experiences were stark contrasts to my first, both amazing and exhilarating. It's like another world being underwater with nothing to listen to but the sound of your own breathing and the faint noise of fish chomping on bits of coral. The living images before you here seem to come straight out Planet Earth and even without a point of comparison, I'm awestruck by the magic of it. I can only imagine what Nick or Chris think having done a fair amount of snorekeling in less healthy reefs before.
If there was nothing in the water but the corals, it would still be a spectacular sight...perhaps the most impressive is the table top corals that are more twice as wide as we are tall. However for me, the magic is in the creatures that maneuver through and around the corals. I'm a huge "Finding Nemo" fan but watching little fish swim through staghorn corals in real life is infinitely better than watching it on a big screen. I could follow the activity in staghorn corals for several hours alone but I find the larger animals to be even more impressive. I've always loved sea turtles and practically squeel with excitement at every sighting. If the tides hadn't forced us to leave Tortegonias this morning, I would have tried to follow one for hours. While I'm not so keen about black tip and white tip sharks becoming too friendly with me, from a safe distance it's marvelous to watch them. Perhaps the highlight of today's snorkel was the chance to finally swim with a manta. Everytime we see one from a lagoon boat, Chris mourns the fact that we don't keep snorkels and masks on hand but today we were already in the water. Gliding smoothly through the water, mantas are one of the most majestic animals I've seen and it was magical to swim alongside one.
One other notable sight, though not living, was the longliner wreck. As Hillary told us, the ship belonged to Koreans who purposefully wrecked it in US waters under the belief that they'd be able to stay in America if their ship wrecked. Unfortunately for them, they were misinformed and got sent home. Meanwhile the ship has begun to leech iron into the water and has become somewhat of an environmental burden. Burden or not, it is still a sight to behold. This massive rusted ship is full of dark windows into it's murky interior. Whether or not real danger lurks inside, one can't shake the feeling that a tiger shark is just waiting for curious prey to swim by. In other words, I was glad to see it, but also glad to move on to our next snorkel site.
Lest you get the idea that our time here has turned entirely to fun and games, let me assure you that several projects have consumed most of our time over the past few days. Some of my favorites have included collecting feathers from boobies, tropic birds and frigates with Hillary (though the first tropic bird I saw didn't yield many feathers, it was the most adorable ball of fuzz I've ever seen) and taking tissue samples from groupers with Doug.
I think I speak for all of us when I say this has been a whirlwind experience thus far and it's hard to believe how little time we have left to take in everything that makes Palmyra so unique.

-Tessaly