The day started with breakfast at the plum cabin. They organized the cereal boxes to spell “plum.” After breakfast we went straight to the boat to go diving. The first dive spot we went to was Ginger Island. When we got to the dive spot we snorkeled to the elkhorn coral to do our project. We snorkeled because the elkhorn coral we were looking for is commonly found in waters that are in 15 feet or shallower. It was really cool to see the damselfish nipping on the elkhorn coral because they are the main predator of the coral and it was fun to see them in action. We monitored 3 different spots and were able to collect all of the data for our project. As soon as we got back on the boat from snorkeling we were back in the water scuba diving. We were about 5 minutes into our dive when we saw our first reef. Then, out of no where two more sharks appeared to the of us. One of the Sharks had a bite mark on the right side. At one point in the dive we were surrounded by atleast 5 sharks. Once we started to head back to the boat the sharks all vanished. Once near the boat I looked back and I saw the reef shark swimming toward me about 10 feet away. As I turned around he veer off to the left and I saw that it was the same shark with the bites mark. On our next dive we went to the back side of Ginger Island, it’s called the back side because there is a big crack in the side of the island. On this dive we swam around the outside of the reef and saw lobsters and a nurse shark. The coolest thing I saw on the dive was a 5 feet wahoo.
After the second dive we had lunch on the sea monkey, then we went to measure the coral that is going to be transplanted to the Jesuit reef. My partner in counting the number of spikes on the staghorn coral and measuring the progress in size of the coral was Gerard Gonzalez. While we were doing this a yellow jack kept swimming around our coral and was attracted the staghorn coral. Once we were done with all of our planned day activities, we finished the day off right by playing ultimate frisbee on the beach and eating delicious spaghetti and meatballs while watching the sunset.
