Today we woke up earlier than yesterday, but Glen the taxi driver didn’t need to come until 8:30! Anyway I played some frisbee with a couple of friends while we waited. My swimsuit fell again from the porch so I had to go get it again from the bottom of our cabin. After that we went to go get ready to start another long day. We ate breakfast again at the marina. The pineapple here is delicious! Then we got on the boats to head out to sea. Today was based around planting coral. We headed out to long bay to start off. First we snorkeled to look for some places to plant the coral. I partnered up with Caleb and he swam a little faster than necessary while I wanted to observe. We went all along the bay and saw the usual things we’ve been seeing all week: yellowtail snapper, some parrotfish, hermit crabs, and various corals. After that we swam back to the boats and geared up to dive. The first dive was primarily based on just finding the coral. The two types we were planting were elkhorn and stag horn coral. We only found elkhorn coral. Jeff would go around hammering bits on the coral to put in the bag. Each of us got to pick up the coral and place it into the bag. There was a measured out spot that we would be planting the coral. After we did that for a while, seeing the reef, we surfaced and ate sandwiches on the boats. After an hour or so we switched tanks and got back in the water. So we went down and found the bags that we had left down there to plant the coral. We used zip ties and epoxy putty to secure the coral down. What really helped when we were planting was that there was fire coral everywhere. I strapped a piece to the dead coral at first. For the second piece I couldn’t get my buoyancy right to do the coral because I was close to fire coral the whole time. So I kind of just stood on the side of the action for the rest of the dive. When we surfaced we undid our gear and then came back to the marina. After that I went back to the cabin, but Drew wasn’t behind me with the key. So me and Tanner waited for a while and I went back to the wifi place to see if he was there. He wasn’t. So I walked all the way back thinking that by now he would be at the cabin. He wasn’t. So tanner looked through all the cabins to see if he went to another cabin. He didn’t. So I walked back to the wifi place and told dr. Gruninger about the dilemma. Finally Doc found him on the phone in the office which was where he didn’t look. So we finally got into the cabin and showed up for mass. The church was on this mountain and was really beautiful. Our priest was phillipino and was very friendly. Julian and tanner did the readings and joe led the songs. It was a good mass. Afterwards we went back to the cabins and changed our clothes to go to dinner at mad dogs. We had lasagna and watched two more videos made by the students. One was about global warming and another was about oil. Both were informative. Then we walked back to the cabins. ’twas a long day.
