Day 5,
It’s a bittersweet day as our last day of diving and also one of the best and my most anticipated days. We woke up to immediately go to the marina for breakfast and setting up. We had some time to relax and check out the dive shop before heading out to the bay where we’re building the “Jesuit reef.” on the boat ride I ended up discussing video games with Brian. Brian, if you’re reading this, download “ogre battle 64” now! The easier emulator I think is “Mupen 64.” Anyway, we scoped out the area looking and identifying different acropora corals. There were a lot of sea fans and gorgonians, but more beautiful was that there were a large amount of flamingo tongues that I saw. Perhaps a little concerning, but still beautiful. After the snorkel, we talked about how to plant the coral and what to look for in a healthy coral fragment to propagate. With our groups, we dove and looked for coral to collect. We had to wait a little at the bottom, only about 30 feet down, so during then I practiced a little inverted hovering and flips underwater. It was great water: mid-80’s temperature, around 70 feet visibility, and a very small current that only picked up at the end of the second dive. We did 2 one hour dives, where I only used up 1200 psi each dive. It took us forever to find the coral we wanted that was also healthy, but we managed to get 19 pieces to plant. We came up to the boats for lunch and some relaxing time before heading back down for the second dive. This was the coral planting dive. We scoped out sturdy rocks and hard surfaces for zip-tying the coral branches for them to take hold. It was a lot of fun, but that’s about all I can say for what we did. There was at one point a large school of reef squid passing by that was amazing, and a few adults were away from the pack that were curious enough to come within inches if not a foot away from my face. After the dive we headed back to the docks and then our cabins for a 2 hour relaxing break, where everybody ended up falling asleep. This week has been exhausting at times but so worth it. Tonight was our last mad dogs dinner. The meal was great, the weather was nice, it was all just relaxing. I was looking at my dive log, and thinking I should dive more often not only cause I love it, but also so I can take courses to become a dive master and even get a job during college leading dives or teaching. After dinner I was still feeling the sway of the boat, we’ve been on there so much I didn’t really have my land legs yet.
