7/13/16
Today was another early start. We started off with having breakfast at Doc’s cabin and then Glen came and drove us to the marina. I had two dives today and both were in the same location of Cooper Island. Both lasted about an hour. On each dive we looked for a location with Black Sea urchins because they are a key component to our research project. After we found an area during each dive we marked off the area in a 10ft x 10ft square. I was in charge of taking photos of the area and locating all of the urchins in the area. We would leave the area for a long enough time for any fish that we had scared off to return to the area. Once we returned we quickly counted the different fish that we saw and took note of how many urchins were in the area and how much algae there was. At the end of the second dive I saw a barracuda eat a large amount of a school of fish. After the dives our boat Sea Monkey joined up with the other boat Sea Dragon to have lunch on the boats. Once lunch was over we went to a deserted island that was once a salt mine. We had a look at the abandoned houses and the salt pond before hiking to the top of the island and seeing a spectacular view. The salt pond was ankle deep so we walked through that for a while but the water was hot and there was a lot of salt in the water so it really made my cut on my ankle sting. After getting back to the boats we came back to Virgin Gorda to go back to the hotel and work on the data we gathered from today. So now everyone is back in the small wifi room writing our blogs. Tonight for dinner we are having pulled pork sandwiches on the beach and have some down time.
