The night was uneventful except for the rain. It was pouring throughout the night, and the rain kept bouncing off of the blinds and hitting me in the face. But, when I woke up at about 6:10 it was sunny and I was ready for the new day.We began our day with breakfast at the chaperones’ cabin. The egg and sausage combo gave us energy for the upcoming activities. Doctor Gore then gave us the presentation on turtles, and we learned a lot about the history of sea turtles in the Caribbean. Afterwards, the Sea Monkey crew headed to the boat to go to Little Dix Bay to tag turtles while the Sea Dragon crew went to Savannah Bay to capture and study invertebrates.
When my team(Sea Monkey), got to Little Dix Bay, we saw several turtles in the first 10-20 minutes. But, after the first few sightings, we only had a few random and unsuccessful sightings. We were unsuccessful in capturing any turtles, but we saw some stingrays and barracudas, and we learned that the turtles are incredibly fast.
After a quick lunch, we switched the groups and the Sea Monkey crew went to Savannah Bay to capture invertebrates. We saw some fish, and we caught a few sea stars and a sea cucumber, as well as a giant hermit crab. It was really funny to see the sea cucumber spit out water. We released the invertebrates, and we found out that Dawson had caught a turtle with the Sea Dragon crew.
At the end of the day, we had the House Games. Plum Tree started out slow, and it looked like we weren’t going to make it into the final competition. But, Plum Tree won the last event, a blind obstacle course, and we advanced into 2nd place to compete against the Lime team. We started out strong, but we fell behind when I couldn’t find the shell on the shell identification sheet. We still finished in second after a great comeback. We finished the day with a good lasagna.
Tomorrow, we begin the first day of our research projects. I’m really looking forward to studying the parrotfish and we hope that our results will help us learn more about them.
