Once again woken up around 7:30, but this time by Mr Kirby. I was experiencing a tremendous sleep, so I was frustrated to have to awake, but once I remembered that today we would be diving in and snatching turtles I was ready to go. Once again we were treated to a nice quick breakfast. We enjoyed our breakfast and listened to a elaborate and descriptive explanation of turtle history and how we would be catching them by Dr. Gore. After soaking up all the turtle information everyone was ready to hop in the water and grab a couple. We grabbed our bags and took off toward the taxi where our taxi driver, Glen, would then take us to the marina.
While coasting along the path to the marina, I looked around and just admired the beauty of the BVI. Beautiful trees, hills, sky, water, and much more just snatch my attention. Upon arrival to the marina we all scurried off the taxi and onto the boat. We were taken about 35 minutes away to our destination, which was right by Guana island. Then we were drug behind the boat on a line and 4-6 of us searched for turtles. I was searching for about 40 minutes and did not see a turtle. I was a little bummed that I did not find a turtle to grab, but I saw many other cool things such as a five foot tarpin. I swam to the boat and ate a quick snack and then dove back in to look for more turtles. Although we didn’t find any turtles I had a wonderful time snorkeling and being dragged behind the boat.
Following turtle tagging, we had a lunch that made me feel at home again. We enjoyed a nice hamburger and fries. After finishing up our food we again hopped back on the boat to go explore an area where last year we planted coral. Our objective for this dive was to view how well or how bad our corals that we planted had done over the past year. There was many failures but many successes as well. Our dive consisted of taking pictures, measuring coral, and recording data. This dive might have been one of my favorites because we had to search for our planted corals, so it was similar to hide and seek. My dive group consisting of Jeff and Joe, we recorded many coral growths and had a blast doing it. It was around a 70 minute dive at 20 feet. I collected many awesome pictures of the coral. We learned many lessons on how to plant coral and the best way of doing it. This year again we will be planting coral, but this time we are going to do the best possible. We are designing a Jesuit reef by using cinder blocks and concrete to plant our Jesuit reef. After that dive was up we headed back to the marina. I hung out on top of the boat and talked with Casey and Chris. Casey showed us where her house is located. It has a wonderful view. It overlooks the ocean and is on top of a cliff. It is really cool. Casey pulled us into the dock and let us off. All of us tired from a great day on the ocean, we got our stuff and headed back to the cabins to shower up and go eat at the lovely mad dogs.
Tonight we feasted on some delicious lasagna. It was great. Also at mad dogs we threw the football and just hung out. It was nice and relaxing. We imported pictures off of our cameras to update our records of the reef we are creating. I ended the night by having a long conversation with Jeff McNutt. He told me some fascinating dive stories about hammerhead sharks and such. It was a great conversation to end the night.
A special thanks goes to: Dr. Gore for the great turtle tagging explanation and tour, Casey for constantly keeping everyone happy and entertained, Laura for all the small unnoticed things she does such as turning on all our air and helping us out of our seats. Also thanks to the whole dive BVI staff for everything you all do!
