Week 7 in Pez Maya-crocodile & manatee sightings, theme party, start of monitoring, exciting encounters

This weekend was quite a busy one. On Saturday went on a boat tour of the lagoon to see if we could see some crocodiles or manatees. Unfortunately, nobody actually saw any but we did see some sediment stirred up in the water a couple of times and that (apparently) was a crocodile and a manatee. It was really nice to have a proper look around the lagoon though. The only bit you can normally see is quite a small area from the bridge on the road, but it is absolutely vast!

That night was party night on base and we had a Disney theme. It’s amazing what you can come up with when you’re in the middle of nowhere with limited resources if you just use a bit of imagination. People really put in a lot of effort and it showed. Some favourites were Ursula, Nemo, Aladdin & Jasmine and Sheriff Woody! On Sunday most folk had a bit of a lazy day but Liz, Laura, Sarah, Morgan & Rachel (who was visiting us for 1 week from Mahahual, the other base in Mexico) went to visit Akumal. Akumal has a resident turtle population so Sarah finally managed to see a turtle! Actually there were quite a lot of turtles and they are used to people being around so they don’t swim off. They just carry on as if nobody is there.

Back on base week 7 has been another fantastic week for diving with most of us managing the full complement of 11 dives! Hooray! We’ve had some exciting sightings this week and we’ve finally started monitoring. Aaron, Faried and Katie have been out to some of the monitoring sites to monitor adult and juvenile fish. Most people are getting quite close now and are out on each dive practicing. You have to be pretty accurate in your practice dives before the staff allow you to record real data, otherwise the surveys will be worthless. Hopefully others will be monitoring soon as well though.

There have been lots of exciting encounters this week too. We’ve had sightings of golden tailed moray eels, a huge spotted eagle ray and Jaen, Aaron and Mel spotted 2 bull sharks from the beach early one morning. There haven’t been any sightings for ages but now that the lagoon entrance has opened up again they are back!

Hopefully by the end of next week there will be a few more people out monitoring. We might even catch another glimpse of the bull sharks. You never know…

Week 7 in Pez Maya-crocodile & manatee sightings, theme party, start of monitoring, exciting encounters