My trip to the BVI began at around 4 in the morning. After two relatively uneventful flights to Miami and then San Juan, which were spent attempting to catch up on summer reading and sleeping, we walked onto the tarmac to board our flight to Tortola. The plane held at most 30 people, and had two spinning propellors on either side that spun so quickly that we were almost able to pass a flock of migrating geese. We all traveled in this matchbox with wings the grueling 23 minutes to our second to last stop. After grabbing our luggage and heading through customs, we meet Casey and Jeff from Dive BVI, who ferried us over to Virgin Gorda, the island we are staying on. We then took a ‘taxi’ to the Guavaberry Resort, and went to our assigned rooms/cottages/villas. My room/cottage/villa consisted of myself, Dylan Roberts, and Brendan Legas. We attempted to go the bed at a reasonable time, however several dozen birds decided that 11:30 would be the perfect time to begin singing. Despite this noise, we all soon fell asleep. The next 6 hours were both restful and peaceful. This quickly changed at around 5:30 when we were all suddenly awoken by a cacophony of screeches. The composer of this heartfelt symphony turned out to be our new neighbor, a rooster who we found conducting his orchestra of noise perched on a rock not more than 5 yards away from our window. Before we could all gather our cameras to record him, he apparently decided to continue to the next stop on his tour, spreading his music to the other residents of the resort. After cleaning up our room/cottage/villa, we went down to the front of the resort area to take our taxi to head to breakfast, where we enjoyed a basic meal of eggs, bacon, and other usual breakfast-y foods. After eating, we were introduced to some of the other members of the Dive BVI team, including Laura and Caitlin. We then listened to both Laura and Casey’s presentations. These went over some of the basics of fish and coral identification along with an explanation of the coral transplanting that we will be doing later in the week. After the presentations, we had lunch that consisted of ham and cheese sandwiches, and headed to the marina to begin diving. Before boarding, we were divided into the two boats, either the Sea Dragon or ‘my’ boat, the Sea Monkey. After a short boat ride over to the dive site, The Chimney, a site discovered by Jacques Coustea. We discussed the basic protocol for all of the dives this week. We then picked buddy teams (my group included myself and Riley Slusher). Once in the water, we descended and did a short skills test. The dive then began with exploring the reef on the outskirts of one of the many islands near Virgin Gorda. Visibility was around 50 feet, and we saw several different types of animals, including 2 lobsters and several parrotfish. We also held what Laura told us was a ‘West Indian Sea Egg’, which looked like a sea urchin but had suction cups like an octopus. After we had surfaced and removed our gear, one of the dive instructors called for a speargun to remove a lion fish he had seen. After successfully spearing it, he brought it back onboard. We then rode back to the marina and watched as Caitlin dissected it in front of us. After diving, we returned to our rooms/cottages/villas (from here on out to be described as our room) to get ready for dinner. We then walked about a half mile to a restaurant called Mad Dogs, where we had basically a pizza buffet. After dinner, we filled out our logbooks and came back to one of the main buildings to write our blogs.
Unfortunately, we are still working on converting my pictures onto the iPads, but we should have all the necessary cables tomorrow.
