Today we had breakfast as usual and took the taxi down to the Marina. After splitting up with the Sea Monkeys, we sailed over to coral reef nursery that Dive BVI and Jesuit are helping to maintain. During the pre-dive briefing, Casey explained that we had final,y established the reef as a Marine Protected Area, which means it is officially a coral reef nursery. As a Marine Protected Area, the reef was gifted 10 PVC pipe trees to hang the coral from to promote growth. Our job for the day was to clean the sediment and destructive algae off the trees and the corals themselves. Because my ears were still bothering me, Gaz, Chase, and myself were assigned a different task. Casey wanted us to find a spot close enough to the other trees but not too far away to place a quarantine tree for any coral that needed to be separated from the rest of the group. After about a 30 minute search, we finally found a spot with the proper depth and distance from the rest of the nursery. After the first dive, we moved dive sites to The Chimney, Mr. Kirby’s favorite site. This time Becca snorkeled with Chase and I and pointed several interesting geological features of the dive, including how the chimney itself was formed. After the two dives we relocated to Savannah Bay, where we met up with Sea Monkey. We had lunch on the boat that consisted of sandwiches, chips, and cookies. After lunch we swam to shore where we took a short hike through some bushes to a dried salt pond. Beth, a dive master on Sea Monkey, explained how ponds like these help provide a nesting space for wildlife, including flamingos. After we made our way back to the shore, Gaz announced we world have a race, Sea Monkey vs. Sea Dragon, back to the boat in order to decide who are first that night. I made the foolish mistake of not using my snorkeling gear to get to the shore in the first place, so the swim back took an eternity. Luckily though my boat won the race, but not by much. We sailed back to the marina and taxied back to Gauavaberry, where we took a few hours to clean up and cool off before dinner on the beach that night. We had pizza again, which was a welcomed meal, and watched the sun set behind Tortola to end day 5.
