Starting off the day as every other we went up to the Lime cabin to devour some more cereal and honey buns. Instead of heading down to wait for the taxi we went down to the commissary and met with Dr. Gore and listened to her presentation on ARK. In specific we learned about the history of turtles and how species are classified on the extinct scale. It was interesting to see how in some parts of the world turtles are thriving but in other parts of the turtles are critically endangered and need government help to stay alive. Finishing off the presentation she gave us some background on ARK, which stands for Association of Reef Keepers, and how it is a nonprofit and helps in conjoined effort with other nonprofits to help the corals and sea life. After the meeting we headed off to the taxi where our two boat groups split up, one went to tag turtles and the other went to the invertebrate touch tank. My group went to the touch tank first, located in Savannah Bay. At the bay we had a brief “meeting” where we got a rundown on what to look for and what we will do. In short we looked for urchins, sea pearls, crabs, conchs, and snails, and we would ID them and put them in a tank to look at. Fun fact, sea pearls are just single celled organisms that are made of algae and asexually reporduce. After the meeting we headed out and snorkeld in what seemed to be anywhere 2 to 10 ft of water. The reef was alive and amazing out there and there were fish everywhere. The urchins were hard to pull out and harvest because they liked to cramp themselves up under rocks and stay hidden. After coming up to the surface we ID’d the animals and looked at them each individually, my favorite was the sea urchins. We were able to actually touch them and it was weird to feel their tentacles attach on my hands. Finishing up at Savannah Bay we went to Bath and Turtle and grabbed some grub. I personally got the fish and chips, but they had a large assortment of food from wings to burgers to wraps. The fish were deep fried and melted in my mouth, followed by a cool Sprite. Once we finished grubbing we headed out to the docks where we boarded the boat and set out for Mount Trunk to look for turtles. After a good 15 minutes we found no turtles so they threw us a rope and towed us around, still no luck so we changed sites. We ended up heading out to Lil Dix bay where as a group we saw 3 turtles, but only caught a whopping 0. Although we tried incredibly hard, the green turtles just zoomed away into the distance. Finishing off the dive we came back to the docks, and that was when I realized that my sun screen had worn off. I admit it the sun won this time burning the back of my legs and my ankles. Although painful I made it to dinner where we had some chicken burritos with some pink lemonade, a classic. After dinner I’m sat here writing my blog to all my faithful viewers.
