The next day was another boat day,
this time to Joulters Cays,
one of the only active ooid shoals in the world.
For those of you that are not familiar with ooids,
they are a type of sand made entirely out of CaCO3
which precipitates out of seawater under special conditions.
I was really excited for the Joulters trip because,
after researching ooid sands for my presentation,
(we were all assigned a topic before arriving in the Bahamas)
I had to admit to myself that I actually thought they were interesting.
And yes, sand can be interesting if you are nerdy enough.
As it turns out, I am not the only person
who is nerdy enough to think ooids are cool...
my teacher is a borderline ooid fanatic,
so I was in good company.
The trip out to Joulers was beautiful.
Depending on where we were, the water varied from the color
of blue Listerine to green Listerine and every shade in between
and was so clear we could spot sharks and rays from far away.
We chased both, but the sharks were harder to photograph.
The tidal flats at Joulters are only exposed for a few hours,
so we had to time our trip perfectly
so that we could walk around before high tide.
Even though I think my teacher and I were the only two who
had any real interest in ooids on the way over,
everybody fell in love with them as soon as we got out of the boat.
They are fantastic to walk on because they are all perfect little balls.
And because they are almost always submerged,
your feet disappear in less than a minute if you stand still.
I am not sure how long we wandered around the tidal flats
relishing in the ooids, but we must have been there for a while
because we didn't regroup until hunger called us in for lunch.
And then, all too soon, it was time to leave Joulters,
but before we left I filled a bag with ooids to bring home for Orin
so that one day he will understand what I was tracing in
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