My two pound weight in one hand, side by side with my dive buddy Zac, we search carefully for staghorn & elkhorn suffering from some kind of visual malady. This is how we began our day, we dove in the shallows off of Long Beach in Virgin Gorda. We searched for corals displaying signs of bleaching, overgrown algae where the algae had taken over the coral polyps. Also, we were looking to see if there were healthy pieces on the ocean floor, broken off by boat anchors, divers, or even by the current. When we found a piece attached to an injured bit of coral we would use the small two pound weight as a hammer & broke it off at least two inches from the injured portion. We would then place them carefully, to reduce the risk of over-handling them, in a plastic bin. During this we saw a jackknife fish, which was the first jackknife Caitlin had ever seen. Following this, we combined with marine biology 2 & split into groups of two and three, & we attached the coral to the artificial reefs marine 2 created. After collecting & planting coral all morning we went over St. Ursula’s Catholic Church for mass. A mass that took all of 20 minutes, but it was a great experience in a fantastic chapel on a hill that overlooked the harbor & main city. Playing football, we waited for burgers & hot dogs on the beach, & soon after we would go night snorkeling. During the night snorkel I saw a southern ray, a tarpin, & a slipper lobster. The next morning we woke up & ate breakfast in the Internet cafe, & we talked about the schedule for our final full day in the BVI. We started out the day by having Glenn drive us over to a section of Virgin Gorda, where a huge wall with paintings on it was located. We began by repainting many of the walls white, which we finally developed a system for, & the encouragement from the people passing by was also very helpful. Then we focused our efforts on the wall marine biology 2 painted last year, which was a shield with the diver down sign on it. Our goal was to paint a Jesuit cross on it & clean it up a bit, so we repainted the white background, painted over the outline with white, evened it out & painted a blue Jesuit cross on it. For lunch we met up at Rendezvous point & had chicken wraps & fries, also I would like to say all the meals we’ve had on this trip have been amazing. Then marine biology 2 went lionfish hunting & we held an informational lionfish awareness presentation, while Jeff cleaned the caught lionfish. This has been an exhausting, but extremely fun week & has been everything I thought it would be. I would like to thank Casey, Jeff, Jeff Jr., Caitlin, Laura, Pablo, Fernando, all of Dive BVI, & of course Glenn, for driving us everywhere. It’s been a fantastic week & I definitely won’t forget it!
