Jim Hayden –
We started off the day with waking up at 6:45 and going over to the mango cabin to have breakfast. After breakfast Doc briefed us on our day and we headed down to be picked up by glen. My group, the Monkey group headed out first to go and tag turtles. Last weeks group caught one turtle, so we where determined to at least get one. I was with Gerard and Mike to catch the turtles. Our strategy was to have me and Gerard distract the turtle and keep it in sight while Mike went down and tried to grab it by the back of the shell. We looked for about an hour and didn’t see anything so we headed back to the boat. Captain Ben spotted one and we all got our gear on as fast as we could and everyone jumped in the water and swam after it. I was to the left of where everyone was heading in the water. The turtle eventually went right under me and I turned around and took off for it. I tried to keep it in sight while I was swimming so that I could get more people over there. I went for the turtle and got my fingers under the shell, but it wasn’t enough to bring it to the surface. I caught back up to it and tried to turn it around so that I could get more people over to it. Luckily everyone caught up to me and Killian Leonard went down and grabbed the front of the shell but the turtle shook him. I followed him and Killian dove after him, and on the second dive down he got him and brought the turtle back to the surface. We swam to the boat with the turtle and we put him onboard. The turtle conservation and tagging expert who was there, Dr.Shannon Gore brought the turtle on board. She explained to us that even though this turtle has already been tagged, the data is still used to track its behavior. Everyone got pictures with the turtle and we released it back to its home. Then we had lunch back at the marina and I had a cheeseburger. Then we switched and the Sea Dragon group went turtle tagging and my group, the Sea Monkeys went to go look at the invertebrates. Glen picked us up and took us to Savannah Bay which is about 4 minutes away from the marina. Casey had about four to five different invertebrates in a bucket to teach us about. One of the coolest ones where the sea urchins, I learned that sea urchins are not poisonous. The part that makes them dangerous is that their spikes break off once they puncture the skin and you can’t get them out. After snorkeling and seeing all of the invertebrates we got picked up by Glen and headed back to the marina. After being dropped off at guava berry and getting changed
, we headed to the beach for the beach games and dinner. My group did really well in the beach games and got to the championship round. We lost in the last seconds of the relay race along the beach where we had to run around obstacles and roll down sand dunes. Casey provided dinner which was lasagna with bread. Dinner was really satisfying after working hard in the beach games. After dinner we all headed back to shower and freshen up before writing our blogs. After the blogs we headed back to the cabins to get some rest for the day ahead of us tomorrow.
