7/16/16
Today was my last day diving in the BVI. We had breakfast at lime’s cabin today and as usual Glen showed up right on time to drive us to the Marina. This morning we had two dives at the wreck site of the HMS Rhonne which crashed in 1867 I’m pretty sure. It was originally a mail ship but after bravely surviving a Hurricane and a tsunami, people wanted to ride aboard the Rhonne because of its story. It then became a cruise ship and a mail ship. One day while sailing near Salt island a huge storm picked up and shortly after Captain Woolly (yes that’s his name even though I’m pretty sure I misspelled it) was swept off of the boat, a huge wave slammed the ship into a large rock that made the boilers explode and split the ship into two pieces. Only one 1 passenger and the crew (except the captain) survived the wreck. One interesting animal I saw while diving there was a sea horse I saw and noticed that it wrapped its tail on a piece of coral and sways with the movement of the coral for camouflage. This sea horse must have not been to bright because the sea horse was a bright yellow and the coral he was trying to blend into was dark brown. Even when I was only a few inches from it it tried to act as if I had not seen him. After we finished diving we had lunch at Cooper Island beach club which was a pretty nice place and they had a great ice cream shop. We snorkeled around in the bay off of Cooper Island and I saw some cool things. I saw a stingray, two sea turtles, a big eel, and I found a large shell with a sea snail in it. The last ride back to the marina was the roughest due to the rough seas but it was also the most fun. I even got to drive the boat a couple times this past week. We then showered up and went to Mass at a nice church that sat on top of a tall hill which had a nice breeze. After mass we had dinner at the beach which was an awesome cookout with burgers and hotdogs. We had a quick game of ultimate frisbee and then we were briefed about our night snorkel. We stayed in the are not to far away from the beach but I noticed so much more about the marine life and environment of the area just off of the beach now that I was looking closely for anything moving around in the dark. I saw so many black sea urchins and was disappointed I didn’t notice them earlier because we could of used them in our research observations. I also saw a lobster as well as a parrot fish right next to a moray eel which I wouldn’t expect. The most fun of the night snorkel was when Ben found a squid and we got to see it change colors. There was one point where I didn’t notice that Ben turned his light off and he dived down to sneak up on the squid and when I first noticed him I thought he was a big shark because of the way he was swimming through the water and where he had his arms in front of him made it look like a sharks nose. The squid must have thought this too because it inked all over Ben and swam off which was kinda funny. I forgot to mention this earlier but Beth made amazing half and half chocolate and vanilla cupcakes that had cheesecake in the center. So all that’s left is tomorrow. Tomorrows day involves a service project and research presentations which I hope goes well. I’m afraid I might not know the answer to a question about general marine biology since I wasn’t in class for all of week two. I think I did a good job teaching myself what I missed but I’m pretty sure I didn’t do as good of a job as Doc would have done if I was in class.
