The day started with my cabin making breakfast for the rest of the class. The breakfast consisted of cereal, honey buns and chobani yogurt. Right after breakfast, we had a presentation by Dr. Gore about turtles and turtle catching. She taught us about the turtles we would be catching and showed us how to properly grab the turtle with out it biting ur fingers. After the presentation we split up and half of the group went to Savannah Bay to snorkel and pay with different invertebrates while the other half went to Lil Dix Bay to tag some turtles. My group went to turtle tag first, my turtle tagging group had me, Jim and Gerard in it. We started by jumping in the water and searching for turtles for about 45 minutes. We didn’t see any turtles and Gerard’s mask kept fogging up so we went back to the boat to get soap for his mask. Once we were on the boat, Captain Ben called everyone back to the boat because we were going to move spots. When everyone was on the boat we spotted a turtle, and everyone jumped in after it. When I jumped in the water I swam to the left of the turtle to try to corral the turtle. While I did this Jim was swimming on the right side and we successfully made the turtle turn around and Killian grabbed the turtle by the neck. The turtle we tagged was named Dawson because it was the same one caught from last week. But to honor the fact Killian Leonard caught the turtle, we re named the turtle, “Dawson Leonard”. Once we got back in deck we took measurements of the turtles and took plenty of pictures with the turtle. We still had some time before lunch so we continued to search for turtles but we couldn’t catch any. After turtle catching we went to The Yacht Club again and I had a great BBQ burrito. After lunch the groups switched, we went to Lil Dix bay to see the invertebrates while the other group went turtle tagging. On Lil Dix bay we got to play with sea urchins, sea pearls and lettuce slugs. I learned that not all sea urchins are poisonous and also that they poop and eat from the same hole. I also learned that sea pearls hold fresh water in them and they get out the salt water by excretion. After we learned about invertebrates we were able to snorkel and have some free time on a beautiful beach.
After we finished with our day activities, we had the beach games. Which were a cabin vs cabin competition over athletic and academic prowess. The activities were a water balloon dodge match, a drawing contest, a relay race, and finally a multiple step obstacle course. My team came in third in dodge ball and second in the drawing contest. We didn’t end up winning anything else and we didn’t win the title of “Kings of the Beach”. The day was action packed and full of fun activities.
