Jim Hayden –
We started off the day by waking up and heading over to Doc’s cabin to eat breakfast around 7 A.M. After breakfast we headed over to the location where our driver glen would pick us up. Glen took us to the marina where we got on Sea Monkey boat and set up our scuba gear. Captain Ben took us to cooper island where we got geared up to dive. Beth and our group discussed how we would go about the dive with our project. Our project is to determine if Black Sea urchins have a direct relationship to the healthiness of the reef. To conduct our project we started off by descending and finding a couple of Black Sea urchins in a close area. Then we marked off a ten by ten square around the Black Sea urchins and started to record data. After we mark off the area, we leave for 5 minutes so that the fish and other marine life that live there can come back to their habitat and we can record what lives there. At dive number ones location there were four Black Sea urchins and a variety of fish. After taking down the data we collected our markers used to measure the area and we headed back to the boat to regroup and organize our data. We regrouped and changed the tanks to get ready for dive number two. On dive number two we where going to do the same procedure, except find a different reef that we could use. On this dive we only spotted 2 Black Sea urchins and we used the same ten by ten square to measure. On this dive we left the location for eight minutes instead of five minutes so that more fish could come back to the location and get a better chance to get more of a variety of fish. On this dive there was a better variety of fish. After we surfaced and went back up to the boat, captain Ben drove us to meet the other boat so that we could eat lunch. Casey provided us lunch again with sandwiches, chips, and cookies. After lunch Casey briefed us about Salt Island which used to be an old salt mine that used to be a big operation and made a lot of income for the island. The island is now deserted and the last person to live there died in 2007. Since then nobody has inhabited the island. In the middle of the island there is a big lake that has a light brown look to it. Instead of dirt or sand creating the bottom of the lake, it is filled with salt. Mr.Von took a group of guys and I hiking up the side of the hill so that we could get a better view of the island and other islands around us. The view from up there was amazing, you could see most of the other islands around us and the salt lake below. We hiked back down and got on the boats to head home. Before getting on the boat we had to do 15 push-ups On the way home we took apart our gear and headed back to guava berry. On the way back Captain Ben let me drive the boat for a while which was pretty cool. After we helped the crew get the dive gear off of the boat glen picked us up and took us back to guava berry to work on our project. After working on our project we headed down to the wifi hut to write and upload our blogs. After that we will head to dinner at the beach where Casey will provide pulled pork sandwiches. After that we will head back to our cabins to end our day and get some rest for tomorrow’s adventures.
