We woke up early this morning to make our way down to the teachers cabins for breakfast. After my five star sausage, eggs, and apple jacks it was off to the marina to prep for our first dive. Once on the boat I found out our first dive was going to be in the same place as it was last year, dog island. This dive was a checkout dive to make sure everyone’s skills were up to par. On the boat ride down to dog island I was very nervous. I had not dove since the last marine biology trip and I though I would have no idea what I was doing in the water. But after a quick briefing by my instructor we jumped in the water and it all came back to me. It was like I had been diving everyday since the last trip because I felt I had a great dive. Although this dive was very helpful in getting me back into diving mode there was not much to see. I did see some beautiful coral and some blue tang fish. Although the first dive was fun the sites were nothing compared to our second dive of the morning at the coral gardens. At this dive site there was a sunken airplane that we got to swim through. What was cool about this plane is that it crashed on land and was later bought by the dive companies to be placed in the ocean in order to become a place of interest for divers. This airplane has been under water for many years and in turn has turned into a beautiful artificial reef. There were coral and a plethora of fish such as goat fish surrounding this plane. The plane was only part of the dive for we got to swim through amazing coral reefs where I saw many animals such a barracuda, sting rays, and many moray eels. After this dive we went back to virgin Gorda to eat lunch had a quick break then it was off to the baths. We toured the baths last year but that did not take away the amazement I felt when looking at these giant boulders we were maneuvering through. After getting a tour of the baths we went to the water to snorkel from the shore of the baths all the way back to the beach at Guavaberry. On the forty five minute long snorkel I saw many fish and a lot of fire coral. It was a very beautiful and calm snorkel because we got to go at our own speed. Once we got back to Guavaberry we went to shower and then got in our project groups to discuss with our dive master how we were planning on going about our experiment. We have been prepping this experiment since the class we took a month ago. He gave us many great tips and helped us tweak our project to where our hypothesis and experiment is much more focused. After this we went to the beach watched an amazing sunset and ate some great tasting lasagna. I had a fantastic first day which reminded me of why I chose to come back for Marine 2.
