We didn’t blog yesterday, but I will still recount the day.
Yesterday was quite the tough day, but very rewarding as well. It began with an early wake up to be ready by 7:30, followed by a ride to the Barbour for breakfast in the Dive BVI office. That morning’s was similar to yesterday with the addition of banana nut bread. After breakfast, we headed out to the boats and took a short boat ride to long bay on Virgin Gorda. Apparently every island has a “long bay”, or even several, or Jeff might have been messing with me about that. I couldn’t tell if he was serious. When we arrived at long bay, we had two objectives and two dives. The first dive, our objective was to gather pieces of coral that had broken off and were laying around on the ocean floor or to break off healthy parts of bleached or algae covered coral. Me and Jackson worked together on this and we found several good sized pieces of coral along with a few smaller pieces. Towards the end of the dive, we also saw several interesting marine organisms, the coolest one by far was the jackknife that Caitlin spotted. 
At first I was wondering why she was so excited when she was pointing it out, but then she later explained that it was the first one that she had ever seen, so it made more sense. It was really cool to see though.
On the second dive, our job was to take the coral that we had collected and connect it the the artificial reefs that Marine biology 2 had created. I worked with Jeff on his artificial reef and I’d say that we were fairly successful. It was kinda difficult to attach the coral to the posts that they had but I’m sure it was tons easier than trying to attach it to the rocks like they did last year. My group attached 3 pieces of coral. The process itself seems easy, but when you actually try and do it, attaching the coral is difficult. You have to stay at the right level by controlling you breathing, all while focusing on attaching the coral and making sure that you don’t hit any other pieces of coral.
After attaching, we had to take measurements of the coral, which was challenging because doing anything underwater is much more challenging than on land. We took height and base measurements. Then Jeff lost his mask, so we had to spend time looking for them only to have Caitlin wearing them when we pass her.
When we got out of the water, we had a lunch of turkey sandwiches and chips. The chips were special plantain chips though, which I didn’t think were half bad.
When we were done eating, we had free time on the boat. The marine one guys decided to play charades and it was pretty entertaining, but then we had to leave. When we got back to the marina, we then jumped in the taxis and headed back to guavaberry for showers before mass.
The mass was held in the church on top of a mountain in Virgin Gorda, which was absolutely incredible. Probably the best view of Virgin Gorda. It was a very fast mass, but it had a good point. After mass, we came back to Guavaberry for a barbecue on the Guavaberry beach hosted by the Dive BVI staff, which was a delicious meal of burgers, chips, and cookies. 
After everyone had eaten, we all went on a night snorkel, which was interesting because several animals pop out that you wouldn’t see otherwise. The coolest thing I saw had to be the octopus that was crawling along a wall. After we got out of the water, we headed back to our cabins for bed.
Today was also a good day of course. We got to give back to the community and have fun at the same time. This morning we got up and had breakfast at the commissary. It consisted of banana bread and cereal along with several pieces of fruit. After breakfast, marine one headed down the road to meet Laura at a section of wall that had a painting that needed to be finished as well as several other sections of wall that just needed to be painted white. The painting was a shield that had the diving flag on it and a jesuit cross on top of the whole thing. We worked very carefully so that the painting looked clean, and it ended up being very sharp looking.
Following that, we went back to Guavaberry for showers and the jumped back in the taxi to go to the marina, where Casey had tables set up for Jeff to dissect Lionfish that marine two had caught.
It’s really surprising how much smaller lionfish look out of the water than in the water. There were also a lot of people who came up and watched them dissect them. I distinctly remember one person saying, “the only good lionfish is a dead one.” I can tell the island has a very welcoming stance towards the fish, which have been invading the Caribbean.
After the dissections were over, we had a lunch of wraps and fries and rendezvous and then headed back to guavaberry for some free time.
I guess this is the final blog post, so I really need to thank all the Dive BVI staff for taking time out of their schedule to help us. I know that all of us at Jesuit have really appreciated it. I also need to thank the teachers for creating this class so that I could do such incredible things. Lastly, I need to thank my parents for sending on this amazing opportunity, I’ve had a blast.
