Today, we enjoyed our last two dives and also had a nice discussion over various questions related to the course. The day started out when we all woke up to a downpour outside. When the rain calmed down a little, we made our way down to the waiting taxi. From there, we left for the marina and the dive shop where we ate breakfast. Next, we went out to the boats and drove to Mt. Point. This is where we did both dives for the day. The first dive was a fun dive where we all went down and looked at a lot of coral and fish and also practiced skills we improved on throughout the week. As we completed this dive, we made our way to the top of the boat and relaxed a little before starting the next dive. The following dive was a very important one because it was a reef identification dive involving the transects. Each buddy team on the boats had a certain position to do while on the dive. You could have set down the transect, done fish or invertebrate identification, looked at coral involving algae and bleaching, or taken up the transect. My buddy and I got the coral or substrate position. Before we went down for this, we had to wait for other groups to go down and do their jobs. While we waited, we snorkeled out in the water to a cave where schools of little fish swam around our feet. It was pretty cool to see so many there. We then made our way back to the boat to prepare for our dive. When we finally got to the transect line, my buddy and I took out our books and pencils and marked how many bleached coral we saw on each side of the transect and also took a percentage overview of algae per twenty meter marking. The job wasn’t too bad, and I also liked the dive back to the boat as well. At the surface, we all turned in the data collected to go into one large database. Then, we went back to the marina where we took a photo of “The Dragons” all together on the boat for the last time. We soon got on a taxi and went to the Old Yard Village, the place we went to mostly everyday for breakfast and lunch. With lunch finished, we began our discussion where each buddy team was given a question. Our question was over the reef check, its difficulty, and how it can help the BVI area. Each group answered their question in front of “judges”. I was a little nervous, but I think it went over well. After we were done, we went back to the resort, and then we walked to Mad Dog’s for our last time. It was lasagna night, and we also celebrated two birthdays. This night also included filling out our dive books and taking random photos. Today was full of dive action, and I am looking forward to the service project tomorrow and also the last full day here.
