Tobago Expedition: Day 8

The science officer, attempting to move us along in our studies, gave the coral lecture this morning. We’ve not yet taken the invertebrate test, and my brain is rebelling from taking more in when it hasn’t yet purged itself of the old information. But the morning dive will be another invertebrate pointy, so I will be able to refresh my skills before the test.
Or not.
The sputtering of the engine yesterday turned into a wracking version of whooping cough, and has now died all together. Our captain is spending the morning trying to fix it, while we are now devoting our time to studying. In theory. I’ve actually taken a couple of hours to lie down. Between all the carbohydrates I’ve been packing down and the lack of proper sleep, I’ve been feeling rather ill. It’s almost like the dry land version of seasickness: I’m dizzy, the land keeps undulating, and my stomach is upset. Fortunately the symptoms are mild, but unpleasant nonetheless. And it’s making studying a bit difficult. I’m pretty sure the invertebrates in the book aren’t supposed to be swimming.
Ah, and now we’re being called to take the test. Fun!
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Sure enough, I wasn’t prepared for that. I’ll be trying again tomorrow.
More carbohydrates for lunch didn’t do much to help my quease, but I wasn’t willing to pass up the afternoon dive. I learned long ago that it is possible to throw up on a dive, so in I went.
The boat is still crippled, and we opted for a shore dive instead. Apparently, if you listen carefully to the SCUBA instructor and can properly read a compass, there is a bit of a reef in diving distance of the shore. My dive buddy is compass literate, but neither of us paid attention to the directions. We went off on our own little unintended exploration of the sandy bottom of Man O War Bay. We saw sand. And then more sand. After a while, we came across, you guessed it, sand.
There is one thing to see out in the desolate reaches of the bay. It’s aptly called The Thing. You don’t actually want to see it- it’s approximately eight feet long and looks like a cross between a blob and a giant centipede. I think. The photo in the book wasn’t very clear. But by the end of the dive, I was looking forward to running into it, just to see something, anything other than sand.
We were served pizza again for dinner, which was good because it helped the expedition leader’s asinine comment of the day go down. Peanut butter is the only source of free-flowing protein we have, but we’re low and he refuses to buy more. During dinner, he announced that we need to lay off the peanut butter and can only have one serving each so it lasts longer. It’s a fifteen-serving jar, and there are seventeen of us. How long does he expect it to last?
Very low spirits today. Hoping tomorrow is better.