Walking out of my room this morning i was oblivious to the fact that it was the fourth of July, only to run into none other than Colin Taylor. He was flashing American flag swimsuit reminding all of us of our country’s freedom. It was wonderful, our first day at BVI is the fourth of July. Technically it was yesterday but today was the first time we experienced the BVI in daylight. We began by meeting with the manager of the hotel we are staying at. She introduced herself and welcomed us to the hotel. After this we hopped on a taxi and rode to a hotel where we were brought breakfast. Although we had met Sam, Andrew, Casey and Jeff the night before, they formally introduced themselves and told us how they became involved in scuba divinng. Both families had the intention of staying one year in the BVI, but they became hooked and have stayed since. After breakfast Casey started a PowerPoint about BVI and the human effects on fish here. Casey showed us different types of fish and species we would experience in the water, even providing us with signals she would use if we saw these. After this we were told our team assignments. As she pulled up the PowerPoint I waited for the revealing moment. Moments later I was extremely relieved to discover that I was on team sea dragon ( for those of you wondering why… Come on, dragons > monkeys). When our first briefing was over, we had lunch quickly before going to catch the taxi to the marina. At the marina we got on the boat and were briefed for the dive. When we got out to pond bay we jumped in the cool water and began my first ever salt water dive. After getting through the more boring stuff, buoyancy control, we began to explore. With the endless ocean ahead of us, we set out. Barely into the dive, we spotted commotion near the bottom. As we neared this, the commotion turned out to be not just ruckus but instead a southern stingray. This stingray soon realized what a threat we small humans really were and swam away. Next, we swam over an abandoned minefield, or so we thought, until the instructor told us they were baby conchs. As we started towards the boat, we saw several things such as an octopus hole and several coral. After the dive we were debriefed and brought back to the marina. After this we are planning on cooking out on the beach.
