A government official from Tortola came with us today to help us with tagging sea turtles. Joelle explained that we would be pulled behind the boat on snorkel by a rope and when we saw a turtle we should hold up our hand and release while keeping our eyes on the turtle. Then we would have a person on each side of the turtle and someone in the blind spot to free dive down and grab the turtle.
This was surprisingly really fun. It was difficult at times though because you didn’t realize how far the turtle went down and ran out of air half way down. We ended up catching one hawksbill turtle and we tagged it on both flippers and gave it an electric tag. We then proceeded to Savannah bay to have lunch. Jessica got a lot of different creatures from different phylums such as invertebrates, annelids, and cnidarians. A lot of the animals were giving stress responses which were cool to see, like the fire women when irritated would send out spikes like a porcupine. There was also a lettuce slug that had a hydrostatic skeleton and when pulled out of the water it would turn to mush. We were then given free time that we used to play a mix of ultimate frisbee and rugby on the beach.
