This morning we were allowed an extra 45 minutes of much appreciated sleep. For breakfast we met Casey and the dive staff at Mr. Kirby, Doc, and Mrs. Boyle’s cabin for breakfast and the caught the taxi into the marina. Before going our separate ways both boats met on the Sea Dragon to give a short presentation on the process of tagging turtles with a government official named Joel. After the briefing my boat took a taxi to Savanna Bay for a lesson on invertebrates given my Sarah and Jessica, who had spent the last hour or so collecting specimens from the reef just off the beach. They collected two crabs, three urchins, two flamingo sea slugs, a sailor’s eye, a fireworm and other various invertebrates. After the lesson we snorkeled off the shore for about 20 minutes before eating a lunch of ham sandwiches in the beach. After lunch we took the taxi back to the the marina and my boat headed out to attempt to tag turtles. Our first site had my dive team towing behind and the boat and Ty spotted a small Hawksbill turtle swimming along the reef. The rest of the group dropped the line to assume our formation around the turtle and dive down to attempt to catch the turtle. After a few failed attempts the turtle swam into deeper waters where we were not able to capture it. Later we sailed to a different spot with much shallower water and many more turtles. Almost instantly Luke Kelley spotted a Green Turtle and dive into the water to capture it. He actually managed to wrestle the turtle out of the water and put it onto the boat. After taking several measurements for the databases, Joel put two metal flipper tags on either front flipper. After the flipper tags Joel injected a pit tag into the turtle’s shoulder muscle and we released the turtle back into water. After returning to the marina we took a taxi back to Guava Berry to rest for a couple hours of rest before heading to dinner. After dinner Casey and Mr. Kirby showed us the live feed of the camera that Marine Bio 2 I staked the week earlier. She also talked to us about the process and strategy of replanting coral on the Jesuit reef. Then we walked back to Guava Berry.
