The day started off slowly as we were introduced to the dive staff and the agenda for the week. Casey then introduced us to the issues with sea world, particularly related the captivity of killer whales. Hank and I were then called up to debate. Hank argued that sea world was necessary because it gave people an amazing opportunity to see orcas that is life changing for these people. In my rebuttal I touched on the inhumanity of capturing whales and how Sea World’s main goal was money. After making ridiculously awesome shark hats, Casey went over fish identification and how to identify fish using a field guide; we played a few games to help us remember all of the different species. At this point we went out to dog island for our first dive! It was extraordinary, even though I sucked through all my air fairly fast. We started the dive by descending to 40 feet and practicing some skills(regulator recovery, mask flood, etc) I was surprised at the fact that I actually knew the names of a lot of the fish we saw. Jessica, our dive instructor, led us through a tour of the reefs and among many other things we saw a 4 eyed butterfly fish, fairy bassler(I was surprised how small this one was), sea shrimp, crabs, and a variety of different corals. Towards the end of the dive when we were about to do our safety stop two moon jellies swam right by us and Jessica showed the proper way to touch them and not get stung( she later explained that the moon jelly stings rarely ever have an effect on humans) they were very cool feeling and strangely enough felt like jelly. After the dive, we rushed to make it to church on time. The church was spectacular and sat on top of a mountain with a brilliant view of the island. When we got back the Dive BVI staff was waiting for us on the beach with pasta and we ate while watching the sun set over the water. After this we ended the day with a relaxing swim in the ocean.
