Today was the first morning that another cabin had to make breakfast for us. While it wasn’t as good as the previous two breakfasts, the cereal I had was very satisfactory. After applying an enormous amount of sunscreen, we went to meet Dr. Shannon, who is a turtle conservationist. She told us about the history of turtles in the BVI. Turtles, who once were so populous that one could “walk across them on the water” are now a threatened species. Dr. Shannon also discussed turtle tagging and how it helps us to trace the migratory patterns of turtles. Turtles will typically be born on the Yucatan peninsula will travel to the Atlantic, come back through many Carribean islands such as the BVI, mate off of Venezuela, and lay eggs back to where they were born. Afterwards, we went to Savannah Bay, a beautiful beach where you can find the beach houses of Taylor Swift and the CEO of Bicardi. There, we looked for invertebrates and collected them in a bucket. In the bucket we saw snails, urchin, and starfish. We also found a fire worm, which when irritated can shoot out needles that irritate your skin when in contact. After eating a crabmeat and shrimp wrap for lunch we went turtle tagging in little dicks bay. Tagging a turtle involves grabbing it by the shell and brining it to the boat. Surprisingly, turtles are very fast underwater so the only way to catch it is to plan a strategy and trap it. After several hours our dive constructor caught a turtle who was tagged in 2004. We then went back to the cabins and headed out to the nearby beach for the annual beach games. While our cabin destroyed with a clutch first place finish in pictionary, our slow speed in the relay races got us a dull third place finish. We had lasagna for dinner on the beach. Despite us not diving today, I still learned a lot and enjoyed the very entertaining activities I took part in today.
