The main focus for our last day of diving in BVI was coral transplanting, which was divided into four steps: picking the staghorn coral from a coral reef, preparing the site where we would plant them, planting the coral, and measuring the successfully planted coral. After breakfast, marine 1 and marine 2 split off: marine 1 going on a hunt for eligible staghorn and marine 2 preparing the replant site around the underwater panoramic camera. For marine 1, we found plenty of staghorn in the reef to replant… And by “we,” I mean the dive masters. The students were fairly unsuccessful in finding any staghorn coral. Jimmy and I found a lot of diseased staghorn that could not be harvested. We also found a few other coral that looked like staghorn but were just soft coral that looked like staghorn. Another group basically argued the what was firecoral and what was staghorn for a large chunk of the time. But back on the boat, we saw that the box had more than enough staghorn for planting. We then met up with marine 2 to have sandwiches for lunch. After lunch, we began replanting the coral. A few marine 2 guys and Mr. Kirby went ahead to place the epoxy around the camera, then marine 1 buddies went out to place the coral with a marine 2 student to guide us. For me, I planted my coral without a problem, but when I finished holding the coral while the epoxy dried, I looked around to see jimmy having a problem with his fairly large piece of coral. Once jimmy and I both finally got out of the water, we swam back to the boat. For the final step, measuring the successfully planted coral, marine 2 was sent out to do the measuring while marine 1 went snorkeling, but I decided to go with marine 2 to take pictures of the measuring. The tally was eight successfully replanted staghorn coral.
Then we want back to the springs to relax for about two hours before dinner, so I spent the whole time catching up on my snapchat and Instagram. Finally, we had a pizza party on the beach, where I tried for the first time BBQ pulled pork and hamburger pizza and Jeff gave a few of us some life lessons.
