Today was a really cool day, because we finally got to do what we had been focusing on while we were here in the BVI. We started off by doing a fun dive at the westernmost point of Virgin Gorda. There were a ton of jellyfish swimming around the water, and everyone had fun touching the top, and a few people exhaled underneath them and watched what happened. We then went around the reef, which had much more life than I would have thought, since it was so close to the shore. The were a lot of blue tang, parrotfish, and I also saw the large trumpetfish. There was also a fish that was about a foot and a half feet long, but I had to be within eight inches of him before I even realized that he was even there.
After that, we went back to the boat, and drew names to see what jobs we would have for the reef check. My job was to find and count the different invertebrates that were on a hundred meter section of reef. Luckily, the jellyfish had moved on, so I didn’t need to count all of them. It was still pretty difficult, though, because they were all hiding under rocks.
After everyone had finished, we went back to Old Yard Village, where we have had the classroom sections, to recap the dives. We had lunch while Sam and Casey tallied up the marks that we had made in our books. After that we had our “final exam”, which consisted of ten questions, divided between the ten diving pairs. My question was about the characteristics of ifferent types of fish, and what they contributed to the reef. It was fun looking back on all our dives and all the cool things we saw
Here’s a picture from yesterday, but it was too good not to put it up.
