The morning of my first day in BVI was brutal because I barely got any sleep, and I didn’t get much sleep because of these two reasons: I was jetlag from arriving from Hawaii literally the night before, and the room was as humid as Satan’s sauna. I woke up bright and early at 6:20am, not because of the alarm clock or the Mr. Kirby knocking on our door, but because of the roosters cockadoodledoing right outside the window. The whole marine bio crew met up at 7:45 to go to breakfast (when I got over my jetlag by drinking five cups of coffee) at the Olde Yard Resort, where we also had a little meet-and-greet with the dive instructors and an orientation of the different types of common fish in BVI. We also did some fish identification games before lunch. After Lunch at the resort, we went the the marina to do our first dive. On our boat, dubbed the “Sea Monkey”, we had a little crash course safety briefing about the boat. Out in the water, we set up our dive equipment, put it together, and did our buddy check (my dive buddy was Jimmy Merkel). In the water, Sarah our dive leader ascertained that everybody was able to do underwater scuba diving techniques and identify marine life we learned back at the resort. In my opinion, this was one of the better dives I’ve done solely because of the fact that I was able identify the many different types of fish I saw. Post-dive, the instructors taught us how to rinse off and put away the BCDs and regulators. We then went back to the Guavaberry rooms to freshen up for dinner at Top of the Baths restaurant where the seniors took a lot of selfies with the sunset. Finally, after the dinner, we filled in our dive logs, which I haven’t done since back in ’09.
-Edward Ryan Roxas Talatala
