Day 4
Today we woke up an hour later than normal, thank the stars, so we could go to Doc, Mrs. Boyle, and Mr. Kirby’s hut for some breakfast. Casey and another dove BVI member brought us the closest thing to home food we could get: wrapped bars, apple juice, yogurt, and honey buns. We want back to our cabin for a little card game before we met down at the cattle guard to go to the marina. At the marina we went into the Dive BVI shop when a freak rain storm came up. I bought a new shirt and then everyone went down to the sea dragon ship to meet Joel; a guy from the government who specializes in turtle tagging and conservation. He gave us a brief overview on how we would be able to catch them and then how he would tag them. Half of the group then went on a boat taxi for savannah beach for an invertebrate study, the rest rode on the sea dragon to Paul’s grotto where we dove a few days ago. They threw out two long rope lines on each side of the boats stern and 6 guys got in snorkel gear and took a hold of the rope, 3 on each side. The first group got in and our captain started towing everyone. As soon as someone saw a turtle, they raise their hands and everyone else swims to it and tries to catch it by grabbing the shoulder and back of the shell. Soon one of the guys saw one and everyone was swimming around it for a solid 20 minutes before one of our dive maters got in and got it in about 2 minutes. We then brought it onto the boat, identified it as a hawksbill and took its measurements. Joel then started to put the tags on it’s fins using a plier type tool and a pointed tag. He did the first one, demonstrated how to do it correctly and them let me do the second one. Then he put a tracker into its neck and allowed to swim away. Then the second group, including me, got in and we towed around for forever and couldn’t see anything until the boat shouted out a position for any turtles. We swam to it but it was gone before we got close, the. We saw one deep down, about 40 feet, and me and another tried to dive down to get it. He managed to scrape it and I couldn’t get close to it. Then we got back on the rope for a while until we saw a green turtle with 3 fins. We raced to it and tried getting it; but, it darted off too fast, which gave meaning to their name “Ferraris of the sea”. Then we went back to the boat and drove to the marina and got in our bus and went to Savannah beach. There we had some sandwiches for lunch and then the staff showed us some invertebrates they found on the beach, then we snorkeled around the shore for a little looking for them. Then we played some variation of a frisbee game in the water which was fun. Then we got back in the bus and drove to the marina. On the way we saw the place where Harry Styles and Taylor Swift broke up. Then we got back to Guavaberry and had a few hours of down time. Then we walked up to the baths where we had Asian food night. After admiring the sunset and having an awesome conversation about rebreather a with Jeff and Jeremy, Casey had a presentation for us about our coral replant tomorrow. We discussed how we would be collecting the coral, what we would do with it after, and where we would be planting it and by what means. She also showed us a live feed of the camera that was installed by marine 2 last week. I can’t wait for tomorrow and it will probably be one of the best moments of the entire week.
