Hawaii / Tahiti 30 Day Cruise - Day 15 Sea Day

Saturday Day 15 – Sea Day

We woke up this morning to gray skies and rain, but being in the tropics the temperature was still warm.  We skipped breakfast and made our way to Tour Guide Julia’s presentation on Moorea.  As with all the others she shown us during her presentations, Moorea looked wonderful, we are really looking forward to visiting all of these islands.  Her presentation was again followed by Dr. Ken Longenecker who this time was lecturing on “What’s Under the Ship”.  He talked about the layers of sea life that lived below us as we traveled along.  It’s amazing that there are some fish that live three or four miles under the surface in total darkness and near freezing water.  One of the more interesting things he talked about was what the sea life on the ocean floor at these depths eat.  It turns out that when the bigger fish such as whales die in the ocean they sink to the bottom and don’t decay due to the near freezing temperatures of the water.  A single whale can feed many fish for up to ten years.  Surprisingly enough, studies have shown that these dead whales (called “whale falls”) are spaced an average of three miles apart on the ocean floor so the fish don’t have to travel far to find food.

After the talk it was off to lunch and then Val went to the Team Trivia. Val’s trivia team is still going strong, living up to its name, which is “Smarty Pants”.  We didn’t do much this afternoon until four when we had another meet up with the Cruise Critic group for a cocktail party.  We touched base with Nancy who has set up several private tours we are on, and then after chatting with a few people, we left.  We had a few questions we wanted to ask Julia the Travel Guide about Moorea, so we headed down to her desk on Deck 1.   We spent the rest of the day in the cabin reading and watching the sea go by until dinner time and then it was our usual routine of dinner and the casino.  Tomorrow is Rarotanga, which we are of course looking forward to.  I’ll finish the day with a few more beautiful sunset pictures Val took.

                                                 

 

Note:  Due to the Internet speed being so slow lately and the number of ports coming up, there may be delays in updating the blog.