Day 5
Today we woke up at our normal time, 7:00, and went down go the marina when our bus picked us up. We had breakfast at the marina again and when we were done, we went to our boats and put all our scuba stuff together. We rode over to great dog island, the place of our original dive and the chimney, to find staghorn coral that either had fragmented not too long ago or infected coral with bits that were healthy on it. Our dive group got in the water; and not even two minutes later we found a giant pile of infected staghorn. But the disease was only recent, so there was plenty of healthy tips to snap for the transplant. We got about five pieces and headed back to the boat after a little photo op. We regrouped with the sea dragon at the Jesuit reef site. The site is a shallow area along a coast where very few boats go and drop their anchors, making it ideal for a place for coral to grow undisturbed. It also is the area of the camera that marine 2 put in last week. We moored our boats together and sent out a small group of people to clean the substrates, or areas where we’d put the coral, and then mark the area so we could glue the coral to the area. During this time, one of the staff started to clean up the coral by scraping off algae and ensuring the coral was void of any disease. Then we hopped in and had to swim for about ten minutes to get to the site. Then the dive teams took turns going down and epoxied pieces of coral onto the ground. Then we went back to the ship and dove down a little longer just to use a little more of the air. We came up and got on the boat, got out of our gear, cleaned everything, and swam around the boats for a little until everyone else got back. Then we broke out the sandwiches, cookies, and chips to eat lunch on the boat and I chilled out on the bow and got a little sun. Then we got back in the shade to discuss the rest of the day and got another opportunity to relax and I took a nap upstairs on the boats until we got going again. I took another nap and when I woke up, we were heading into shore where I gave scuba Steve back his fin strap which he had let me borrow because if my broken clasp, thanked him, and got on the bus to coke back to Guavaberry. We were able to just chill and relax there for about 4 hours. Then we went down to the beach for pizza night. It was an amazing night and the sunset was beautiful. We played frisbee on the beach for a little before having really fantastic pizza. We ended the night by making a few new friends on the beach and playing a bit more frisbee then coming to the wifi room to finish this up.
