The morning of the 17th began with a brilliantly served breakfast by our neighbors in the Plum Tree cabin. We talked, ate, and got bitten by plenty of mosquitoes. We then rode down to the Sea Dragon and began preparing for our research for the day. Our first dive site was a return to George Dog Island where we found plenty of Barrel Sponges. We wanted to gain a little more evidence for our research, so we conducted our experiments on 4 different sized sponges. We decided to use a green coloring which turned out perfect, and worked very well in collecting what we needed. The Barrel Sponges were much larger at this site, and we closed out with 7 pieces of evidence from 3 dives. Our last dive of the day was a return to the Chimney Dive spot where we decided to test our how other sponges reacted to the dye. Sadly we were disappointed since the sponge diversity was much lower in that area, and our orange dye failed to show up well.
After returning to the Spanish Town, we ate and discussed the “Battle for the Beach” games. We took part in activities with our cabin members including: Sand Pictionary, Bury your Buddy, a Relay Race, a Blindfolded Obstacle course, and a race to put on your dive gear the fastest. Our team, Lime Tree, ended up tied in second. After a barbecue put together by the captains of our dive ships, we waited to begin our night snorkel around the beach on the Guavaberry Resort. We saw multiple squid, an octopus, and many other types of fish. We also fed the brain coral a lot of bloodworms by shining our lights and attracting them to the coral’s tentacles. Although we are all extremely exhausted, we are getting ready for our Sea Turtle Tagging tomorrow.
