Day at the Beach

Although I've been enjoying my internship so far, I'm pretty excited about the four-day weekend that I'm currently enjoying. My Easter weekend is off to an amazing start. Today I began the day by heading off to a local dive shop for a morning of SCUBA diving. There are two other girls staying at the same place as me who have both been using the same dive shop, one who is getting her open water certification (which I just finished last October) and one who is training to be a dive master. The dive master in-training, Sami, accompanied me during my dive. We had amazing weather, it was a relatively cool morning and not as windy as it's been the past few days. It is currently the beginning of the rainy season so it's supposed to be getting more and more windy and rainy this time of year. The water was about 28 degrees Celsius and the visibility was great. We saw so many amazing fish, and I still need to find a field guide in attempts to figure out which species I saw. Every time I SCUBA dive I say to myself, that was the best dive yet! I hope they continue to improve, but I really don't think they can get much better.

We were back from the dive by lunchtime, and I opted to take the 40 minute walk on the beach back to Mwamba. It was lovely weather and it was nice to explore more of the beach on my walk. I ate lunch at Mwamba before heading across the street to where McKenzie Schessl works at the Watamu Turtle Watch. The organization works to conserve the local sea turtle population by rescuing turtles that have been caught accidentally by local fishermen. Community members will call the organization to report the turtles and then the organization will pick up the turtle, evaluate the health condition, and either bring it back for rehabilitation or release the turtle back into the marine park, where fishing is prohibited. We got the grand tour of the rehabilitation facilities and even got to help tube-feed a turtle that has been unable to eat. Later we got to go out on a call to rescue not one but 4 turtles. We drove with the staff to different sites where fishermen came in with the turtles, usually caught in their fishing nets. They took the turtle's measurements, noted any of its characteristics or injuries, and tagged the turtle as well. Then we loaded the turtle into the car and brought it to one of several release spots on the coast where fishing is prohibited, with the hopes that the turtles wouldn't be accidentally caught by fishing again.

the walk out to the dive boat

rehabilitated turtle

tube-feeding

the release

taking measurements

back to the ocean!