Waking up at 8 am, a welcoming change, we begin our day with a quick lunch here. After, we continue with our day. Half of use go to tag sea turtles and the other go learn about invertebrates. I went turtle tagging, perhaps one of the most interesting things I’ve done in my life. Joel the marine biologist gave us a lesson before we began. The turtles are tagged to see their travel patterns, where turtles from different areas meet to mate, population control and more. The main turtles we were looking for were the green or the hawk beak and we would tag the, with a metal tag on the fin and a satellite tracker in the muscle tissue. To catch said turtles we were towed behind the boat at 4 miles an hour, which felt like 50. Once one was spotted we tactically placed ourselves around it and someone went at it through its blind spot. What we did not anticipate was the turtles ability to evade us. They are called the Ferraris of the sea. After chasing one for 20 minutes it was finally wrestled into the boat. Once all the recording of the data, the length of the shell, fin, and tail, we tagged it and let it go. Not before giving it a name first; krush. Once turtle tagging ended we began our invertebrate lesson on the beach. There was a sea purl, the largest single cell organism on earth. Also a crab shell was shown. A female has a slimmer design on the belly than the male does. The queen trumpet snail was fantastic as well. We learned that cutting star fish in half it grows into two. After this lesson we ended the day with some frisbe and some dinner. Day 4 a success!
