We got up around 7:15 and met at the cattle guard at 7:45 where Glenn picked us up to go to breakfast. The cheesy omelet filled with bacon and sausage I had today was good, but lacked the quality taste of some of the other breakfast omelets I’ve had this week. Anyway, we headed to the boats to get ready to dive for coral and on the Jesuit reef with our camera. Our first dive sight, Coral Gardens, which was just a little ways away from the Jesuit reef, was centered around finding at least 10 staghorn coral that was on the bottom not attached to anything or unhealthy coral that has some healthy branches that can be used. The healthy staghorn coral has an orange/yellow color to it and the unhealthy coral can be bleached or have disease growing on it. We found most of our staghorn coral with disease on it so we just snipped off the healthy branches to use in our reef. The first dive lasted only around 20 minutes and I used just under 400 psi. Our next dive, was short as well and consisted of us going down to the reef next to Jesuit’s camera and plant the staghorn coral pieces we found. Marine 2 had installed and got running the underwater camera last week, and it looked really good. The camera has the ability to measure water temperature, salinity, and pH as well as, take live feed day and night of whats going on in the vicinity of the camera. It is also cool because there are lights installed next to the camera so we can see what is going on at night. If you are lucky, you can see squid dive down from above and pick off the little fish swimming next to the lights. We planted the staghorn coral by using nature friendly epoxy that sticks to the rock/coral and holds the new coral in place. We positioned pieces all around us and the extras we stuffed into rocks where they also have a chance of growing. We hope that they grow up as strong new staghorn coral that will provide habitat and food for different types of organisms. The dive ended and we had a quick lunch on the boat before we headed back to the marina. Our time in the water was over for the week and we were all a little bummed, but we did get to do a lot of cool things in it so we were satisfied. From the marina, we headed back to Guavaberry and hung out in our cabins until 6:30 when we would have pizza on the beach. At the beach, we played frisbee and chilled until we ate. While eating, there was a killer sunset that we all got pictures of and we just sat around and talked. There was a group of guys from Anguilla on a mission trip that I met, Shim and Deante and then the rest of their group. They were really nice guys. The day is coming to an end now and we are sad are last day is tomorrow. We are going to make the best of it.
