We started off the day by going down to Casey’s office and have a wonderful feast of yogurt, pears, mangos, and granola bars down by the marina. Once we fed all the nearby chickens Pop-Tarts, Marine Bio 2 got onto Sea Dragon and headed over to a dive site called “Wreck Alley” in Deep Chromis off the coast of Cooper Island; however, we had to surface swim 150 yards and ended up right above our desired dive sight exhausted. During this 2 day long journey along the surface to get above the Mariel’s shipwreck, my dive buddy, Killian, almost keeled over from lack of energy and was going to call off the dive, but with my suave persuasion skills, I convinced him not to. I particularly enjoyed this dive because I got many great pictures and I love shipwrecks because of the high number if marine and coral species living within the safe confines of the sunken ship, using it as cover.
After we finished our Deep Chromis dive, we decompressed at the surface and went on another dive called “Shallow Chromis”, go figure. At Shallow Chromis we did a transect line where several divers went out in different directions and recorded all the characteristics of different and coral in the area.
Shortly after, we went to the long awaited Cooper Island, where my cabin mates, Caitlyn, and I ate their famous fish n chips, that I have been waiting a whole year for. Once our stomachs were full and Killian and I ended our photo expedition after discovering the macro setting of our new camera, we entered the Sea Dragon and travelled back to the Marina, where the real work started. We entered Casey’s office and discussed the plans for the new additions to Jesuit Reef at Long Bay. Marine Biology 2 began thinking up plans to create reef structures with breeze blocks, dowel rods, and concrete, that Mr. Singe so generously helped us with. Once Jeff foolishly dropped a whole bag of concrete on the mixing block, because his muscles were so big, we were well on our way with plenty of concrete to use on our reef structures. We eventually decided that we were going to create three rows of 5 unique reef structures that each student created with their own design. Tomorrow, we will go back to Long Bay and strategically drop our coral in places that the coral can grow successfully and benefit the marine life and the reef of that area.
