BVI – Day 6

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Today, after we woke up at 7:30 and ate breakfast, we drove to the local high school to help clean up the area around what was to be the new library. Casey had told us that the school experienced several problems the previous school year regarding the students, and it made me truly appreciate my own school and the opportunities it provides me and my brothers with. We spent the morning planting, cementing the new porch down, and moving gravel and dirt to the second floor of the school. The assistant to Richard Branson’s organization, Unite BVI, even came to help us with the project. After we had been working for about four hours, we went to lunch at the Bath and Turtle and relaxed for a while before we went over to the dive shop where the Plum Tree cabin collected our free hats we earned after the battle for the beach. Then Glenn came to pick us up and drove us back to our cabins, where we prepared ourselves and our groups to present our research projects to the teachers and dive instructors that helped us. We explained to them how our hypothesis (That Parrotfish would visit cleaning stations run by cleaning gobies and cleaning shrimp less than other fish due to the mucous membrane they secrete themselves in while they sleep) was not necessarily disproven, but not supported by the data we had recorded. We had found that many Parrotfish actually visit cleaning Goby stations, which went against what we had predicted, and we did not have enough information to really come to a conclusion regarding the cleaning shrimp stations due to the lack of fish we were able to record (we assumed this was because of the large amounts of dead coral in the area). This made us question whether or not the Parrotfish were truly being cleaned, or just looking for their next meal (Parrotfish’ diet regularly consists of algae stuck on coral), and just happened to pass by the cleaning station. We had also begun to question whether or not the mucous membrane they use during their sleep truly protects them from parasites or other harmful organisms, When we had explained the results of our experiment, we prompted a new experiment similar to how turtles are captured and tagged, but we would capture Parrotfish and measure the amount of parasites, algae, or other harmful organisms on the bodies of the fish and compare it to the amounts on other fish. With this information we would be able to figure out whether or not the mucous membrane Parrotfish secrete themselves in as they sleep really protects them from harmful organisms and only serves the purpose of masking their scent. After our presentations, we walked to the restaurant above the baths at the beach for our last dinner with the dive instructors, where they showed us the video of our week together with them. The video sparked a lot of feelings and I would love to come back on this trip next year.