In the morning of our first day we woke up at 7:00 to get ready for a day of mysterious travel. We went to the instructors villa and had a scrumptious breakfast that included egg, sausage, cereal, bagels and milk. After that we went onto the boat and learned about some of its safety features including the life boat, life jackets, oxygen and the radio. After our safety breeding we headed to the dog islands and dove on the sight “George dog.” This first dive was mainly to refresh our memories on different skills a diver must have to be safe such as clearing a mask and recovering a regulator. After we completed the task successfully we swam around the reef and noticed the garden eels and blue tang that were scattered throughout the reef. Once we got back on the boat we were briefed on our next dive at coral garden, which has a plane on it. When we jumped in the water we played with the moon jellys at the surface of the water and then descended using a rope as our point of reference. One we were at the bottom we noticed several garden eels and several bar jacks near the flat sandy area. We then swam through the plane with the overhead compartments still in place and noticed a squirrel fish waiting for us at the exit point. We continued to swim around the plane and then noticed a white spotted moray eel. We made another safety stop at the line 20 feet under the boat while we continued to watch the parrotfish feed underneath us. We got to shore and had lunch and then went to our cabins for 40 minutes of down time. Afterwards we went to the baths and and hiked all the way to the ocean while learning that BVI was on a bathlic plate (read shallow) and that the large rocks that were found on the trail were made of granite that had seeped out of the earth. There are many rumors involving these baths that tell tales of pirates and slave trade. Once we got to the ocean we began to snorkel back to the villas beach. We saw more granite boulders as we swam with many urchins and shrimp attached. Several interesting things that we saw on the dive were a stingray and a juvenile smooth trunk fish hiding from predators in the fire coral. When we got to the beach we went straight for our showers and got ready for dinner on the beach. We ate lasagna and bread for dinner after throwing the frisbee and dancing to all the single ladies.
