In the BVI today we began gathering data for our research projects. We did this on two dives today. My project revolves around the type of habitats that squirrel fish prefer. On each dive we planned to find two areas one with a lot of live coral and one with little live coral and then mark these areas out and count this fish inside. The first dive went great but a member of my group who will remained unarmed left some of the markers behind. On the next dive though were able to find and recover these markers but it was almost a disaster. After these two dives we went to a bay where mangroves grow. This is significant because mangrove roots provide a habitat that is great for nursing young sea creatures. So there are many baby creatures there that utilize the habitat for nursing their young. One of these sea creatures are sharks. I didn’t see any myself because I was not able to go on the snorkel because I was to sunburned but I heard that some people saw some baby sharks. There was also many donkey dung sea worms which were squirting out their intestine as a defense mechanism when the snorkels hovered over them. After those two dives we worked on our presentation and had a chill barbecue which was a great end to the day.
