Week 2

Day 8: Sick but Still Kicking

Woke up today still feeling under the weather, cough, fever, the works. Luckily, some of the other interns had gone to the village yesterday and brought back meds for me (bless them). Despite the fever fog, I still did one shore dive on the house reef. It was supposed to be a shark/ray/turtle survey, but it quickly turned into a nudibranch spotting bonanza. Also found some juvenile sweetlips and pufferfish, honestly, a pretty wholesome dive.

Later on, I had my shark, ray, and turtle species ID test, and I passed! Woo! One down, three to go.

In the afternoon, we had a fish measuring workshop/test, which was kind of chaotic but fun. We got two minutes of explanation, then they dropped 11 sticks of different lengths into the water, and we had to estimate their sizes… using only our bodies. Sounds weird, I know. But this is how we learn to size fish in surveys, by using things like forearm length or hand spans. The tricky part? Everything looks 33% bigger underwater thanks to light refraction.

Despite being feverish and confused, I somehow got all of them right, within the 5 cm margin. Not bad for a sick day.