Today is our final project presentation day. The day started off the same as the others but breakfast was at Lime tree cabin. Everyone was able to sleep in 30 extra minutes this morning which was supposed to be very nice, but my other two cabin mates did not tell Luke Gomez and I up so we woke up at 7 am and showed up to the breakfast cabin at 7:30 am and waited til 8am for breakfast to end. We walked down to the Wifi room for a 9:15 am meeting after breakfast and a lady named Shannon came from the BVI marine conservation company to teach us about turtle life cycles and migratory paths. Fun fact, she taught us that the turtles that tagged off the coast of Anagoda island have some of the fasted growth rates in the world. She also taught us that one turtle they tagged traveled around 10,000 kilometers its its life cycle throughout its juvenile phase to its adult and mating phase. After the meeting, myself and Luke were switched to team Sea Monkey for the day to go out on a sea turtle and catching adventure. Gaz drove us out to an island and a team of 5 towers holding onto ropes were dragged behind the boat in search of either hawksbill or green sea turtles. Either Jack Lynch or Luke Gomez spotted a hawksbill sea turtle and they began the hunt to catch it physically. The last 5 including myself on the boat also jumped in to try and catch the turtle. The catch lasted about 10 minutes and I had 1 and on the sea turtle three times and was unable to get a second hand on there to bring it up to the surface. That made me mad haha. Immediately after I had my hand on the turtle for the third time, Cooper Marshal dove down and snagged the turtle. He brought the hawksbill turtle onto the boat and began the tagging with Shannon. The first step in tagging is writing down all of the dimensions to the turtles. Cooper measured the width of the shell, the length of the shell, the width of the head, and the length of the tail. The next step was tagging each flipper and injecting a satellite tag in the turtle neck. After this was completed, Shannon grabbed the turtle for a group picture and handed it to me to release it back into the water. I had to wait for the turtle to take a breath because the turtle actually could have suffocated if I threw it into the ocean before it took a breath. Now it was my teams turn to jump in. My team was dragged behind the boat for about 20 minutes and didn’t see a single sea turtle. We had to fight off schools of Jellyfish and moon jellies which was rough because I got stung in the face twice, the next once, the arm twice, and the leg twice. It didn’t feel very good haha. After 20 minutes, we came aboard the boat and drove back to the marina. Marine 2 guys had a special activity with Jeff in the afternoon. Before we went out to our dive, he treated us to lunch, told us his life story on how he became a dive instructor and owner of Dive BVI, and taught us multiple life lessons. Life lessons 1-5 are strictly for marine 2 ears only so I am unable to tell anyone except graduated marine 2 students. For example, life lesson number 87 is “stay away fro the pointy ends” and life lesson 32 is “be specific.” After lunch, we headed out to the Jesuit reef, set up our dive equipment, did a back roll into the ocean, and swam about 100 meters out to the dive site against the current which was very tough and tiring. Once we got to the site, my dive buddy John Sauer and I took picture ps of all the existing coral still alive and well at the site that were planted last year. There were only 7-8 stag horn coral strands still alive and they were very healthy and were growing. After we finished with the pics, we dove back to the boat underwater to avoid the current and I ended the dive with about 2000 psi. It was an easy dive and I didn’t see anything really specific besides reef fish that stuck out to me. I them exited the water, stored my dive gear and had a toast with Jeff and the Marine 2 guys in Thanks for everything we had done and in Thanks for all of the dive staffs help with our projects and leading the dives. We toasted a Dr. pepper and it was a big deal to drink one with Jeff because apparently he doesn’t share them with anyone so I was very thankful. We then drove back to the marina and was picked up by Andrea to take us back to Guavaberry. She brought us back and I immediately showered and had about one hour until My project group presented our project. The pressure was on then and I began to get a little nervous. Our group practices and rehearsed our parts a couple times and I felt a lot more confident about presenting. Our group presented first and the presentation lasted about 20 minutes and it was really good in my opinion. Hopefully the teachers and Dive instructors think the same. After we presented, everyone chilled outside while the other groups presented and we waiting for dinner. Dinner was on the beach and it was very relaxing and good because it was pizza once again, which tasted amazing. Talking with the dive instructors was awesome and very fun. The day was great and I can’t wait to have another relaxing today tomorrow.
