Today I woke up with a huge swollen left eye with no idea how it happened. It wasn’t painful or anything though and went away eventually. We headed to the harbor at the same time as usual, 8:00, expect our taxi driver Glen came thirty minutes late. We had a full action packed day planned for us so breakfast again was short. Our plan today was to officially extended Jesuit’s border by replanting staghorn coral and build an artificial reef. Staghorn coral used to be abundant in the Caribbean, but climate change has decimated the population and they were the first species of coral to be put on the endangered species list. The replant and artificial reef was planned to go down at Long Bay off Virgin Gorda near a not so happening reef. We first buddied up in snorkel tea,s of four and scouted out locations to collect staghorn coral fragments. Regrowing coral involves finding diseased coral and snipping 5cm away from the diseased area and zip tying the fragment to another piece of coral, you could also use a broken off fragment. You know a coral is diseased because it will be “bleached” / having no color on it (zooxanthale). The snorkel scout trip lasted about an hour before we headed back to the boats and got suited up for harvesting. Our harvesting trip was done at around the depth of twenty feet, so pretty shallow. We circled around the reef looking for staghorn coral to collect. We ended getting around twenty fragments, which is a really good amount. We put the coral in a specified drop zone and went back to the boat. We had lunch break for an hour and a half and ate some great sandwiches and chips. Our group suited up again and got ready to plant the coral. We ended up planting nine pieces of coral. My job was to document the length, width, and number of points each coral. Unfortunately almost everyone’s buoyancy was out of whack, especially mine and we destroyed about as much as we planted. After an hour of planting we got back on the bats and headed to mass. Mass was kind of done haphazardly in a catholic church that had an amazing view of the bay and harbor. After mass we headed for dinner at mad dogs. Dinner tonight was Italian and delicious. Today was a good day
