Day 3,
Day 3 started at 6:20 to the sound of a chicken outside of our cabin. After gearing up for the day and lathering up in sunscreen, everyone headed over to the chaperones house, Hibiscus. I enjoyed a honey bun, some juice, and a blueberry yogurt, overall a very satisfying breakfast. After, breakfast we were driven by Glenn (the taxi driver), to the yacht harbor and got on our boats and headed out. Today was the first day we started working on our group projects. My group’s project looks at the correlation of parrotfish and algae growth at various coral reefs. We are hoping to see that the less parrotfish means more algae and more parrotfish means less algae. Our first dive site was Ginger’s Hole. This dive was very smooth and cool. While swimming to our test location we encountered two Blacktip Reef Sharks, that proceeded to swim in and out of our 5meter by 5meter test location. I thought this was very cool because I love sharks and thinks there beautiful. Our first test went by smoothly and using Lion fish markers and meter tape to help mark our area, we gained data and were able to use to start creating a graph. This first site had one parrotfish and 90% algae cover on the coral. This directly correlated with our hypothesis. Our next dive site, was on the other side of Ginger’s Island.our second dive was very neat, the ground was all coral and the diversity of fish reminded me of something out of Finding Nemo. This dives test went smoothly and we saw 6 parrotfish and the coral had 60% algae cover. On the way back to the boat from our test site, we saw a Green Moray Eel, a giant Barracuda, and a massive lobster that was at least 3 feet long. The coolest part of the dice was watching our dive leader Zoltan spear and kill a Lion fish. Lion fish are an invasive species that’s natural home is in the Indo-Pacific. In the Caribbean the Lion fish have no natural predator, so killing them is good because they do not belong in the marine ecosystem of the reefs of the BVI. Zoltan speared the lion fish and then stabbed it in the back of the head, the venom of the lion fish started oozing out in a green liquid, it was very cool and graceful. After we finished our dive we met up with the Sea Monkey and ate lunch. I enjoyed a delicious PB&J sandwich and rested on the boat. After lunch, both boats went to Salt Island, an abandoned salt quarry used during the slate trade. On the island, we hiked and walked through the giant salt lake in the middle. It was a very pretty island and had great views at the hills peaks. After exploring the island, everyone headed back to Virgin Gorda, and now I have caught up with time. Presently I am writing my blog and relaxing. Tonight we are eating on the beach, and enjoying pulled pork sandwiches cooked by Casey. Tomorrow, we are tagging sea turtles and collecting invertebrates for the talks so we can study the animals. Tomorrow should be a great day just like the beginning of this week has been. I’m looking forward to it a lot. I’ll check back in tomorrow.
-Jake Hubbell
