Today was another fascinating day. Today we woke up as usual and went to breakfast. We enjoyed a nice quick and light breakfast in preparation for our awesome day. We had a long day in front of us and needed a quick breakfast. Casey prepared the perfect platter of fruit and cereal. Following breakfast we walked out to the boat and headed out to our dive spot which was at wreck alley, Cooper Island. This was our first two tank dive as we were doing two dives in succession. The first dive we ventured out under the sea and towards the ship wrecks. Excited to go deeper than usual, I descended fast. My dive buddies and I followed Casey as she took us through the ship wreck and we explored the magnificent waters filled with large fish and beautiful coral. We eventually reached 84 feet which was exciting. I saw some large yellow tail fish and some really cool blue chromis. After this dive was finished with, we took around a 30 minute break on land. Casey and Laura thoroughly explained our next dive and explained our mission to us. Our mission was to perform and coral examination. We were to take data from the corals around the area. Dive buddy, Jeff, and I collected the data, returned to the surface, placed our equipment on the boat, and headed back down for some more fascinating scuba diving. We searched around awhile longer finding many feather corals and making them go into their holes. After about 20 more minutes we returned to the surface once more for good. We were sadly done with scuba diving for the day, but there was more fun to come.
After the diving was finished we headed to Cooper Island Resort where we enjoyed a great feast of fish and chips. This meal is almost everyone’s favorite meal of the week. I quickly threw the delicious food into my mouth and then headed back to the boat where we were to travel back to the marina. It was a very rough ride back and I was soaked by the over powering sea. Once back at the marina we began working on another project. This is our main focus of the week. We will be creating our own special Jesuit reef with cinder blocks, cement, dowel rods, and coral. The marine two guys designed and created their cinder blocks today. The way we are creating this reef is that every marine biology 2 kid is creating their own design where the marine biology 1 guys will go attach a piece of coral onto in hopes that more coral will grow.
My design is simple but creative and easy to attach coral to. I have once cinder block with two holes and another cinder block with one hole. I filled the one hole with cement and placed two 5 inch dowel rods into the cement. The dowel rods are placed into the cement in order to attach a piece of coral with a zip tie. The corals will begin to sprout up toward the sun if the dowel rods are correctly placed straight up. The coral must be attached straight up in order to have the best growth. When we finished dumping cement and designing our blocks we headed back to the cabins to shower up and eat at mad dogs for the last time ever.
After my shower I cleaned up and headed to the cattle guard. While walking to mad dogs I was talking with buck and we were realizing that this was the last time we were going to mad dogs. We then realized that the summer is coming to and end and then thought about how high school is coming to an end. We had a great conversation about great memories dating back to freshman year, and we decided to make the most of our senior year. It makes me sad to realize that our time in the BVI is coming to an end but I have had a great time and do not regret a second of it. After finishing up quesadillas and nachos we thanked Inga for the last time and headed back to guavaberry. It is time for some bed because we have a long day again tomorrow.
