Today we set out for our final lesson on the marine life we’ll see inVirgin Gorda early on the morning. Laura, one of the Dive BVI instructors gave an excellent presentation on the different groups of organisms, such as sponges, herbivores, grazers, coral, etc. and the characteristics of the fish belonging to them. The presentation informed me well and helped later in the day understand what was going on while we were observing the reefs. After the lesson, which was around an hour, we headed to Savannah Bay to snorkel for a few hours to look at some of the behaviors and habitats of the organisms we just learned about. The beach was one of the most picturesque sites I’ve been to. There were two mountains on both sides covered in lush green vegetation, the beach was nearly pearl white and declined rather steeply into the insanely clear Caribbean Sea. About twenty yards past the shoreline was a fringing reef, which a reef that is shallow and close to the shore. I buddied up with my friend Gavin Patterson and began to explore the reef. The reef was filled with hundreds of colorful unique fish. Most were roughly 3-8 inches long since we were only viewing the shallow areas of the reef first, but as we went to the deeper areas the size of the fish grew as well. The reef is filled with crevices that fish retreated after we involuntarily scared them when we passed over them. Gavin and me reached the outer edge of reef where there was a drastic ten to fifteen foot drop. There we spotted a small green sea turtle, which is a semi rare sight where we were diving. Later we met up with four other of our friends, Clayton, Jack, Jimmy, and Drew. All of us toured more of the reef for about thirty minutes before we went in for lunch. Lunch was simple just a turkey sandwich.
We ate pretty quickly and then had a demonstration from another Dive BVI instructor, Casey, about some of the more simplistic creatures like sea urchins, slugs and worms. Once Casey finished we we hopped on the truck and drove to harbor to begin our second dive. This dive would take place at the world famous chimney off Dog Island. We put on our tanks and dove down. This reef was much more densely populated with fish and coral. We saw Blue Tangs, Trunk fish, Queen Angelfish, Hawks bill turtle, and more, but my favorite was the trumpet fish. The trumpet fish has a long slender body and stalks it’s prey by hiding behind larger fish. My instructor took us through a canyon-cave type area, we were expecting to see moray eels, but instead we were pleasantly surprised with a hawks bill turtle. Unfortunately my camera fogged up and I didn’t get any decent pictures. We then went through the world famous chimney, a small split in the reef that diver can just barley squeeze through. It was a really cool experience. After that we toured around for a little bit, but went up pretty soon and headed back home.
I realized today that I left out various things from yesterdays blog people may find important, such as our rooms, the island, airplane ride, etc. Our cabin is located about five miles out from the harbor with about a two hundred foot elevation climb. It’s part of the Guavaberry resort. Our cabin is etched into huge boulder into what i believe is limestone. It’s raised about ten feet off the ground, and has two decks that have view of the ocean and other islands. The inside features a bedroom and a small living room/kitchen, and bathroom. Our journey over to the British Virgin Islands was long, but not too bad, I mapped most of the way and watched “There Will Be Blood” by Paul Thomas Anderson. The islands itself I would say seems like a third world country. The buildings do not seem, very well built. They’re made out of out cinder blocks and tin foil and most look they’re deteriorating and in bad condition. The locals do not look like they’re doing extremely well economically, and then school looked like it was in poor condition. It’s far different from the area I live in. The island itself is beautiful, it’s verry hilly and has 30 ft boulders littering the island. The vegetation on the island is lush, but not the jungle I expected.
