Today we got to sleep in an extra thirty minutes which was really nice. When I finally got up I got dressed and headed to the spot where the taxi picks us up. Instead of going to the hotel for breakfast, we went straight to the marina and ate there. We had two different dives this morning. We ate and then we got onto our boat, the sea dragon. Then Laurie gave us a little history lesson on the boat we would be exploring, the rhone. The rhone sunk on October 29, 1867. Only 23 survived, 22 of them being a part of the crew. The passengers were locked in their room during the hurricane because the captain didn’t want them getting out of their rooms and dying outside the boat. since it was raining, no one in the crew could see where they were going, and they went completely against the wind for five hours. After that, someone yelled that there was land on the port but the captain didn’t believe them. Then they crashed against the island. Only one of the passengers survived. The rhone is a public scuba site in the BVI. We did two dives for the rhone because there was so much to see. First we saw the stern of the boat. We actually swam through the boat. We saw squirrelfish, yellowtail snapper as usual, grey angelfish, purple tube sponge, fire coral, striped butterflyfish, and lots of other marine life on the shipwreck. The dive was a bit short because we went around 74 feet and made a safety stop. That was by far the best dive so far. Then we made our surface interval and we learned a bit more about the rhone from Laura. We changed out our tanks and jumped in for the second dive which was shallower and longer than our first dive. We got to see a lot more things from the wreck like the propellor. We saw pretty much the same things but we also got to see a barracuda right under the boat as we were ascending. It’s body was facing downward, ready to ambush prey. It was utterly fearless to us divers and completely ignored it, unlike all the other fish. Then we went to lunch at cooper island, and I had some delicious fish and chips. Then the owner gave us a tour of his restaurant, and he was very environmentally friendly. He reuses his plastic cups, and his other cups are made from a byproduct of corn as well as his carry out trays and straws. He grows his fruits and veggies on the island, and he has over ninety solar panels on the roof. Then he has generators under the roof and these boxes that convert the solar energy. His laundry detergent is highly concentrated and he gets over three thousand washes per bucket. After that we went snorkeling off the bay of cooper island. Drew was my partner again and we saw a bunch of stuff. There was turtle grass everywhere underwater and there were ballyhoos swimming near the surface. Then, out of nowhere, a beautiful eagle ray soared through the water. It was utterly graceful in the water. We saw some more coral and fish in the water and we didn’t go for very long because we were very tired. Then we got back on the boat and beat sea dragon once again although they started up in front of us. Then we got back to the marina and went back to the cabins to freshen up. Afterwards we had dinner on the marina. What a great day.
