Today was a very fun but tiring day of snorkeling. We got up at 7:30 for a breakfast at lime cabin. By the end of that breakfast, I learned that my project group and I would be serving breakfast tomorrow. Once we had moved all of the supplies for the breakfast to one of our two cabins, my roommate, Charlie, and I got ready to go and watch a presentation about ARK. ARK stands for the Association of Reef Keepers which is an organization that works to maintain the health of coral reefs and general marine life in the Caribbean. The presentation gave us some background on the organization but more importantly, it taught us how to catch a sea turtle. After watching the presentation, we made our way to the boats where we dropped off half of the group to go and catch turtles while my group made our way to the beach so that we could snorkel around coral reefs and find invertebrates. While I was out in the water of savannah bay with my buddy, Charlie, we found a group of squid that we tried to catch. We followed the group of squid to the end of the reef and finally gave up when we lost them in the deep blue. Once we came back to the beach, we had the opportunity to look at and tough some of the invertebrates that the dive staff had caught previously. It was very interesting the way that the sea urchins grabbed onto me rather than sticking me with its spikes.
After we enjoyed prying sea urchins off of our hands, we made our way back to a restaurant called Bath and Turtle where we ate with the other group. Once we were finished eating though, it was time to catch some turtles. We made our way to an area called Mount Trunk where we searched around the area for turtles. We found none at the first area but, it was fun when we were dragged on chords behind the boat to search for turtles on the go. Once we determined that there were no turtles in the area we made our way to another beach at Little Dix Bay. At this beach, we found two turtles. I found the first one in a patch of sea grass around the boat. I followed the turtle and tried to catch it but, in one flap, it was just a silhouette in the ocean. I found the second one in a patch of rocks near the beach and tried to reach for it but it flew through the ocean like a hawk in the sky and was gone in two flaps. Even though we didn’t catch any turtles today, I found it fun and amazing that we even had the chance to see the majestic creatures in nature and look forward to encountering more if possible on our dives tomorrow.
