Day 1 Blog

1

Today we went on two separate dives in the BVI. On the first dive we briefly reviewed our diving skills consisting of partial/full mask flood, fin pivot, respirator recovery, etc. After reviewing these basic skills we roamed around the shallow sea floor seeing sea life such as hermit crabs, grass garden eels, parrot fish and more. Before the second dive we had a break, which gave us time to come up with the great idea to jump off the top of the boat into the water. Although it sounds dangerous it was actually really entertaining. On the second dive, the amount of sea life grew a substantial amount seeing marine life ranging from lobsters and crabs to spiny squirrel fish and princess parrot fish. Also we observed different types of coral such as stag horn coral and elk horn coral. In relation to our ongoing project which consists of observing the relationship between coral health and alhae levels, we learned how little algae is actually on a healthy reef. Contrary to my original beliefs, there is little algae to be found on a healthy reef. I look forward to looking further into this on our dives tomorrow.