November!?

Wow. It is officially November, and in 1 day, I will have been here exactly 2 months. My how times flies when you are having fun/working your ass off. And yes, I added a slash in that last sentence, and yes I am aware of why and how slashes are used in the English language. That slash was there because sometimes things like having fun and working hard really can go together. Or maybe that’s only true if you are a marine biologist? Either way, I’ll take it. Case in point- my day on Thursday. My entire goal for Thursday was to go lionfish hunting. Of course, I do love lionfish hunting for fun (and also for the ecosystem’s sake- see my celebrity blog post here on a friend’s blog) but I had a specific reason this time. Well actually two reasons, the first was because one of my friends back home suggested that I write a lionfish blog- from the reef to the dinner table, as a sort of how-to guide if you will, and of course, I thought this was brilliant, and really love using my speargun, so I reserved a boat. I also happened to be going to a dinner party on Thursday and I have a recipe I have been dying to try and figured I could bring my delicious fish to dinner. Let’s just say that my hunter-gatherer skills are a bit lacking, because I could not find a single lionfish (or any other fish for that matter, seriously, there were zero fish on the reef). And while that may be a really good sign for the reef (the lack of lionfish, not the lack of other fish- that’s actually really terrible), it was a bad sign for my blog post and dinner party. And although my dinner party contribution quickly went from awesome to hummus, at least I spent the afternoon driving a boat from reef to reef through mangrove islands, snorkeling in crystal clear waters searching the beautiful reefs for lionfish. Not a bad day at work/vacation.