Today got off to a rocky start after forgetting to take my sea sickness medication. We geared up for our first dive shortly after eating a rocky breakfast crafted by the seniors, then set off for our first dive site. Today’s dives were focused on our research projects which created tons of excitement. Our group, the “Children of the Corn,” were somewhat pioneers today in a sense that no group had done sponge experiments in the past. We were very skeptical of potential success as we had to craft a new type of dye this morning to inject in to the sponges. In our dives today, we compared sponge flow and diameter by injecting dye and checking its flow out the top of the sponge. The experiment was a surprising success and we saw the flow of the water out the top. After our first dive site, we headed over to Ginger Island and did some diving, which included some close encounters with the reef sharks. After the exciting shark spotting, I seemed to pass out due to sea sickness which resulted in a nasty sunburn on my leg. From here we ate lunch, hiked the “Baths,” then snorkeled back to the beach. From here we are a delicious dinner then played on the beach for an hour. Finally we watched an empowering documentary about the impact global warming is having on the worlds reefs.
Today I learned that all experiments will have flaws and it is ok if your results are different from your hypothesis.
Tomorrow, I look forward to learning more about our experiment and further adding to our data.
