Caleb Kilpatrick
July 5th 2012
Day 2 bvi
The day began nicely, up without the alarm i got dressed with some of the clothes I had left out to dry the night before. It would have gone better had it not rained the night before, these rain storms seem to very frequent…. I wonder if its because of the humidity or if the rain is causing the humidity….. Its probably both.
I was 15 minutes early down to the taxi stop and took a short nap while i waited. Incredibly hungry this morning. Breakfast was good. After breakfast we were ‘lectured’ about marine zoology(cephalopods, marine herbivores, omnivores, fish identification, and possible habitats and indicators of varying species).
Then we took a Taxi ride to savanna bay for snorkeling. While snorkeling we ID’d a lot of fish including an exceedingly gargantuan pufferfish as well as a stingray which we viciously pursued until it left us in the dust. Stingrays can bolt when they want to. It was kind of depressing though because there was a lot of dead coral around the breakers that you could tell had once been exceedingly magnificient and brimming with life. We also spotted alot of purple tube sponges as well as some small colonies of elk and staghorn coral. I believe the main amount of dead coral was elkhorn as indicated of its shape.
Then a taxi ride to the marina and a short boat ride down to the dog islands. The site we dived there is called the chimney. A 50m. Long submerged passageway 30 ft high by 12 ft wide with purple tube sponges and a whole array of assorted colored corals which required the sheltering conditions of the passage to grow stably. I finished my dive with a 3 minute safety stop and 1000 psi in the tank.
Below is a picture of some of the dead coral with a small blue tang in the upper right.
