The Jesuit Coral Corral and Diving with Ghosts
Day 4…
This day began similarly to the last two, we had a tasty breakfast and got in the boats. Then we went to the “coral corral” where we continued the strategy of “over-planting” to build Jesuit’s reef. Over-planting consists of collecting pieces of dying stag and elkhorn coral and then replanting them in more successful areas. We had two dives, one in which we collected coral and another in which we replanted coral with lunch in between.
Then we went to church at a local chapel on a hill led by a very small but interesting priest from Quebec.
In the evening we had a beach barbecue and a night snorkel during which we saw spectacular bioluminescence and a sleeping parrot fish utilizing its “mucus membrane” to create a snot cocoon.
Day 5…
We had another two-dive day today. We went to the RMS Rhone, a wrecked cargo ship off of salt island. The first dive we did was at the largest piece, which is supposedly haunted, where we saw a turtle and barracudas. Then we surfaced and switched tanks. Eventually, we finished our surface interval and dove back to another section consisting of the boiler room and cabin 26. When the ship sank the boiler room exploded and vaporized a third of the passengers along with it. The only surviving passenger was an italian man in cabin 26. Creepy… It is now customary to rub the porthole three times for good luck, once for wealth, twice for a good meal, and thrice for a beautiful wife/girlfriend. *cha* whatever! 🙂
We then ate awesome fish and chips at a restaurant and went snorkeling in some sea grass.
Thanks to Michael White the lionfish population in the BVI is one less than yesterday! 🙂
And now I am sitting in the wifi room trying to think of a Caitlin quote from the day so that she will read this blog post, but I can’t think of one.
