Day three started the same as usual, with a seven a.m. wake alarm and breakfast. Today though, we ate at the jasmine cabin, which is occupied by the marine two students. For breakfast, we ate the same food as yesterday, but today I bought a muffin. After breakfast, we went to the docks and loaded up the boats for the first day of project dives. Once we arrived at the dive sight, my group, which consists of myself, Bobby Wunderlick, Cooper Marshall, Luke Gomez, and Reece Ellison. For our project, we tested whether or not color affects a fish’s eating preferences. We started by taking bait, colored t-shirts, and stands down to the ocean floor. Once down, we set up two colors at a time and after five minutes of observing, we changed the colors up. Overall, the experiment the went great. The control, which was food with no color, attracted the most fish, while the yellow attracted the second most, and the red and blue did not attract any. This helped us understand that the fish may be able to distinguish between light colors and dark colors under the water. After this dive, we packed up the boat and headed to the coral nursery. Once there, we learned how to clean coral trees, which are PVC pipe trees with coral hanging off. These coral trees are how the BVI dive team is helping to grow and plant new coral. After the coral nursery, we were back in the boat and off to the salt pond. Once we anchored, we were given turkey and cheese sandwiches, and an hour to relax on the boat. Then, it was right back into the water for a snorkel to the salt ponds. The salt pond was basically just a dried up pond full of salt, which helps keep sediment out of the ocean. When we were done with the salt pond and back in the boat, we headed back home, where we were given time to regroup with our dive teams and discuss our experiments. After this, we headed to the beach, where Jeff was grilling burgers for us. Once everyone had eaten, we all hoped into the water and enjoyed a night snorkel. The night snorkel was one of my favorite events of the trip because of the many things you see at night that can’t be found during the day. My favorite part was seeing an octopus and many squid. This was really cool because while I have seen some octopus in tanks before, I have never seen either of these animals in the wild before. Also, it was very educational because we were able to learn how many fish sleep and seek shelter during the dark hours. Overall, today was just as tiring as the other days, but just as fun also. There are so many things I am able to learn and better understand on the island than in in the classroom because I am living though the experiences. I had a great time on all of the dives and snorkels today, and I look forward to the many more things I will learn on the trip.
