After the usual 7:45 a.m. breakfast, today started off different in a sense that we headed to the wifi room for a presentation after rather then hopping in the taxi to go to the marina. Today we received a presentation by Dr. Gore, who works for ARK, a marine conversation company. She gave us background on the evolution of turtles, discussed their current population levels and migration patterns, then finally instructed us on how to properly catch a turtle so that it could be tagged properly. After this presentation, the Sea Dragon boat team, which I am on, headed out to Little Dix Bay to snorkel and catch turtles while the other team headed to Savannah Bay to snorkel with invertebrates. After an unsuccessful hour of snorkeling, our boat crew attached ropes to the back of the boat and allowed us to power snorkel in the area around the bay. This allowed us too move much quicker throughout the water and cover more area in our hunt for turtles. After an hour of this towing, we spotted two turtles and nearly caught one of them. In the end, we spotted three Green Sea Turtles and one Hawksbill Sea Turtle with our closest effort being the Hawksbill. We then headed back to the harbor and met up with the other team to enjoy lunch at . After lunch, Glen drove us to Savannah Bay on the opposite side of the island. Here, we snorkeled along the beach line and looked for invertebrates to capture and return to a touch tank on the shore. During this snorkel, I spotted Urchens, Sea Cucumbers, Chained Moray Eels, slugs, and many more invertebrates. After our collection, we placed them in a plastic bucket and allowed Beth to give us an awesome presentation while we aimed to identify the invertebrates we collected. After we identified all of our invertebrates, we returned to the marina and picked up the other group. From here, we went back to our cabins and rested before going down to the wifi room. Here, we worked on the actual presentation part of our research project for roughly an hour until the Dive BVI staff brought us a delicious dinner of Mexican wraps. After dinner, we returned to the wifi room to work on our projects again and write these blogs.
Tomorrow, I’m looking forward to exploring the ship wreck and the coral nursery. I’m excited to swim inside of the ship and see whatever life may be living inside of it.
Today I learned that sea turtles are extremely elusive creatures that are very aware when humans, or any other potential predators, are potentially aiming to capture them.
