Ahh the final day… I’m gonna miss the BVI’s, a place where even the customs officers are friendly. Our final day began at the Olde yard for breakfast and some class info on turtles from the wildlife officer. After that we headed down to the marina to board the sea lion on our final excursion into the big ol’ blue. Once we arrived on site we got kitted up in our snorkel gear and divided into search parties. It only took about 5 minutes for the first group to snag a turtle. I split up with my original group to pursue some turtles with laura. We swam around and saw a ray in the sand but the finally after about 20 minutes we finally saw a turtle. Observant of our lack of resources we maneuvered the turtle in the direction of joe , julian, and tanner with hopes that with the extra men we could corral the turtle into some shallower water and seize it from behind… Not so. Those turtles are scary fast when they want to be and it turned into an all out chase. Deftly maneuvering through the water using his long forward arms he easily avoided repeated dive attempts by me and julian to grab its shell, even working himself out of julians grip. We continued to chase him out into deeper and deeper water hoping that he woulD have to come up to us for air eventually but he tired us out and waited for us to be long behind before he came up for his breath and dived again, out of our reach.
What an incredible animal.
In swimming out I couldn’t help but notice an enormous amount of fluorescent wall nut jellyfish and moon jellyfish. The walnut jellies were especially interesting to me because at first glance you cannot tell that it is giving off a rainbow of bioluminescence along its four corners.
Me, julian, and joe all hitched a ride on the wildlife guys boat back to shore because we where too tired and too far out to swim back in.
When we looked at the first turtle we where able to identify it as a green turtle by observing its shell and especially by counting the number of leathery patches between the turtles eyes.
Sorry, I don’t have a picture of it.
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Big thanks to the dive BVI staff for an unforgettable week and putting up with our shenanigans:
To Glenn for our transportation even in the wee hours of the day today
The mad dog’s and olde yard staff for all our dinners and lunches
And especially the kirby and gruninger family for chaperoning us and organizing the whole trip
