Today was a pretty interesting and cool day. It started off with Christian, Jack, and I sleeping in a bit and getting the much needed sleep that I have been missing for the past few days. After we woke up and got showered and everything, we went to breakfast where I changed up my ordering tendencies and went with a bacon and cheese omelet. After breakfast, our class went into the Dive BVI office to plan out where we would want to put the corals that the first year class would harvest. After all of the planning was finished, we went onto the boat and went out to our new reef site. We geared up and got ready to clean off the spots where our corals would go. We took some heavy duty brushes and paint scrapers with us to accomplish our task. Chris and I found the spot where we wanted to clean off and we went to work on it. This first dive didn’t take more than 20 minutes, and we were back on the boat in no time. After the first dive, we had lunch on the boat and had to fight off a horde of seagulls and what seemed like an endless amount of flies. However, lunch was good, and I filled up on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. After lunch, we got ready to plant the corals on the spots we cleared off. Each second year person was paired with a first year person, because we were supposed to help them. We went through the briefing and waited to jump in and plant. This process took the longest, because the stuff we were using to place the coral on the rocks dried faster than anticipated, so we only got about 8 coral pieces planted firmly. After all of the pieces were planted, we went back to the boat and waited until we needed to get in again. About 10-15 minutes after we got out of the water, we needed to get back in to measure the corals that we had just planted. This was a really brief dive, though, because measuring doesn’t really take up much time. It was actually pretty simple and we were all back on the boat within 25 minutes I believe. After that dive, we went back to the marina and basically ended our day. It was a really cool day and we got to do some amazing things, so that is a success to me. Tomorrow is our service day, and I am ready to get working.
