Synopsis:
The day started as all. We ate our breakfast and loaded up the boats to head to sea. When we got to our first location, it did not take long to realize that the current would be to strong to dive there, so we picked up our gear and headed to George dog island. The water was a little cold, but my wet suit helped. There was a lot of coral everywhere, mostly fan coral and soft corals, but there were some patches of stag coral. Our goal was to make up for some flawed data on our 25% healthy coral. After finding a suitable location, we set up our lionfish markers and got to work. We started our ten minutes and every two minutes we counted the fish. We were mostly focused on what appeared to be a goby that was the only fish in our perimeter aside from the occasional passerby. After our ten minutes were up, we looked around the reef for more suitable staghorns, but we were turned away because there was to much fire coral to safely run our procedure. After exploring the reef for another ten minutes, we went back to the boat. Something that caught my eye was a cross constructed out rebar. We took a twenty minute break on the boat as we travelled to our next spot, the chimney. After our exciting visit on Saturday, we were looking forward to getting in the water. We found a patch of 50% healthy staghorn coral and ran our experiment. We got about the same averages as before, and it was nice to see we were getting accurate data. After our experiment, we went through the world famous chimney for the second time this week. While we did not see the nurse shark, we saw three surgeon fish attempting to eat a school of little minnows. Then after we got out of the chimney, we saw a beautiful golden tailed moray eel. After we finished our dives, we took a rest until around 3:20. Then we spent the afternoon at The Beach Games, a competition of house games that consisted of me being buried in sand and swimming and doing an obstacle course blindfolded. Then we en jotted the beach for an hour throwing the frisbee and enjoying the water. After eating a dinner of pork sausages and pork hamburgers, we took an awesome night snorkel around the bay where we are staying (it is protected for swimmers). It was one of the coolest things of the trip as we saw an octopus, multiple squids (many of which squirted ink). We also got to feed the coral a healthy meal of bloodworms. That was the end of the day for us and we are exhausted.
What I learned.
I learned about the existence of bloodworms and how they are attracted to light. I also learned all the different details of squid, the including bioluminescent scales down their back. Along with bioluminescent, we all turned our lights off in the water on the night dive and we were able to see all the bioluminescent particles floating around in the water, something which I never knew existed.
What I’m looking forward to.
I am looking forward to catching the sea turtle tomorrow. I know it is going to be exhausting and rough on the body, but I think it will be fun. I am also looking to the invertebrate museum where we will be able to get an in-depth look at different invertebrates of the Caribbean. I am also looking to forward a break in diving. Even though diving is really fun, it is also really tiring. All in all, I think tomorrow will be really exciting.
