Today began with another early morning thanks to Doc who graciously woke us up. We walked down the hill to a delicious breakfast, then marine biology 2 headed up to the taxi. The taxi took us to the boat which took us all to Deep Bay where we would look at all the mangrove trees. At deep bay I snorkeled around the mangrove trees with Gavin Tucker Joe and Clayton. Although the snorkeling was a bit shallow around the mangrove trees, we managed to find a dock in the middle of the bay. At the dock we jumped off into the water doing some pretty gnarly tricks. After resting on the dock, Tucker and I disembarked on a two man kayak around the edges of the mangrove trees mapping what we saw and heard. Although encountering troubled waters, we managed to keep the boat afloat and in tact. After kayaking and snorkeling, a few of us played a few very intense games of nukem. We then headed back to the boat to dock elsewhere and eat lunch. After lunch we listened to a presentation by Dr. Gore, who talked about the history of the British Virgin Islands, and specifically the coral on the islands. She also talked about how the tectonic plates which the islands sit on are moving more than most of the other plates. She told us about a story of a yacht which crashed into a rock and spilled about 3 tons of lead sand into the ocean around the islands. After the presentation, we headed out to the dive site, which was located at Cockroach Island. After assembling and getting into our gear, we quickly jumped into the water and learned that we should have worn wet suits. We descended down and swam along the bottom of the ocean where we took many cool pictures with our underwater cameras and saw some great things. As we were avoiding fire coral we saw an eel, a stingray, and a lobster. We returned back to the dock and took a taxi back to the cabins to head to dinner at mad dogs. While at dinner, Gavin decided that it would be a good idea to throw frisbee really high with lots of wind, which we all decided that it was a bad idea after the fact, considering we never found the frisbee. After losing the frisbee, we all congregated to listen to a presentation by Casey about our artificial reef, and how we were going to accomplish our goal. We all thought our day was going to be over, but the fun continued because Chris had to climb underneath Mad Dogs in about a 1 foot crawl space to retrieve a dropped item. In all, it was another great day, as the week goes by it all gets better, and hopefully this trend will continue.
