Today was a day dedicated to our projects. We went out and dove in efforts to finish grabbing data for our projects, but throughout the day, we also had fun doing other things.
Today’s events and what I learned
We woke up early and the Mango cabin welcomed us with a great breakfast. After this, we headed straight to the boats and began our projects dives. On the first dive, which was located at Bronco Billy reef, we located some areas with coral bleaching and yet again set up our project site. We didn’t see much on our first dive, but we gained solid data for our project. On the second dive, which was at the Coral Gardens, we did the same for our projects: set it up, set a timer for ten minutes, and gathered data. On this dive we saw a large grey stingray. It followed us around and then settled in a sand patch. After our dives, we had lunch on the boats. Then we anchored near the shore of a beach, where there are coral nurseries nearby. The group helped to gather data for the coral nurseries such as the number of branches, the longest coral, and the shortest one. Since this only took a couple of minutes, most of the guys were able to have a fun dive afterwards throughout the same reef. Zoltan, one of the instructors, actually killed two lion fish that we saw. He pinned them down with a harpoon-like gun with a claw at the end of it. Then he pulled out a knife and ended it. Afterwards we worked on our projects in Google slides in the media room, the only room with Internet access. Finally we had dinner on the beach and played ultimate frisbee.
What I Look forward to
I look forward to finally finishing the project and presenting our findings to everyone. Also, I look forward to hanging out on the beach on the last day and overall having s great time.
