Today I woke up, with difficulty I would admit, at 7:20ish and walked down to the cattle guard. Glen, our taxi driver, drove us down to the marina where we got to go to the shops and look at souvenirs to buy before going on our dive. We ate breakfast on the marina, a delicious croissant, apple slices, banana bread, and caprisun meal. After shopping and eating, we got on our boats and went to Long Bay. It was about a 20 minute boat ride over, and the skies were clear, and it was sunny outside. We “anchored” next to the second boat – the Sea Dragon who was already anchored, so we didn’t actually anchor, we just tied onto them, so we won’t float away. Sean, Alex, Andrew, and I snorkeled around the reef to scope out potential Staghorn and Elkhorn corals to transplant to other sections of the Jesuit reef. The Jesuit reef is a reef that was smothered by construction accidents on the road above the reef. Our plan was to do a two tank dive, one to collect samples, and then one to plant samples. We suited up, and Jumped in, and split up into. teams. Tucker, Alex, Sean, and I were on a team collecting coral with Laura, who had a reef knife and a weight. I had a mesh bag I was carrying underwater, to put coral samples in, and team members would use the knife and the weight to chip coral branches off. We collected around 7 Staghorn coral and 3 Elkhorn coral. We hooked the bag onto a flag marker underwater, and swam back to the boat. We changed tanks, and then had lunch. I had two turkey and cheese sandwiches and a bag of munchies. It was a filling lunch for the next dive, which would be planting. We geared up, checked our gear for mistakes, and hopped in. We swam over with zip ties and a clip board which I had to write down information about tags, and length and width of all the corals. I wrote down about 6, then handed the board off to Laura, so I could tie some down as well. I went with different teams to plant the coral, and I planted two stag and one elk in various places. The whole dive took about 65 minutes, and we surfaced. Laura told us we could go back to the boat or stay with her. Everyone decided to go back, but since it was our last dive, I decided to stay. I went down with Laura and helped her take pictures of all the specimens. I would make noise when I found another tag, and she would come photograph it. After photographing several, we decided to go up, and head back to the boat. Instead of surface swimming, We went down and swam all the way to the boat. After getting out, me and several others jumped off the boat and swam around with no gear on, which was refreshing. We got back on the boat and we went back to the marina. It was a nice ride, because there was a good mix of clouds, rain, and sunlight. The rain and clouds were far away, so it looked interesting. We pulled into the marina, helped move our tanks, and we’re then told we had 20 minutes to go through shops, so my friends and I went through some shops until we found a restaurant type shop, where they sold cold beverages. We all got one and walked back to the boat. We waited on a bench until we all walked to the taxi, and headed back to Guavaberry. We had 2 and 1/2 hours to shower and get ready. I talked about music with Alex for about 30 minutes while writing my blog post. Then Guy came in and listened to music with us for another 30. After that, Alex and I both fell asleep for 20 minutes until aguy woke us up again. We all grabbed our stuff and walked down to the cattle guard, and waited to walk to Mad Dog’s. I was still drowsy from the nap and decided not to play frisbee. We walked to Mad Dog’s and when we got there, there was no food yet, so we decided to play a game called hookem, which is a game in which you throw a ring on a string and try to get it on a hook attached to the wall. I completely sucked. My aim and power were terrible, and apparently I didn’t grip the ring right. But Jeff saw me struggling, and decided to give me a lesson. It took a few minutes, but I finally hooked one, and it was good. Later I played again by myself, and got it in about 5 shots. We also played Cornhole again, but I only won a match or two before being beaten by Sean and Alex. Then the food came – a mix of Maccaroni casarole and BLT, turkey, and ham wraps. After eating, we all hung out until we were told to log our dives we completed today. Today was my twelfth dive, and I’ve spent about 3-4 hours underwater. Yesterday Jeff told us he had logged around 1963 dives, and had spent a total of 55 days underwater in accumulated time. That stat made me want to get a higher dive license just so I could do more stuff like dive wrecks, etc. After coming back from the commissary, Guy, Jeff, Tucker, and I played hangman for an hour on Tucker’s iphone. Today was exhausting, but tomorrow will be good – service project, and then relaxation on the beach.
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Pictures of the far away clouds
A retreating shot of Long Bay
