Today was probably the coolest part of the trip at least from my perspective. On our first dive of the morning we visited a recently sunken ship wreck called the Kodiak Queen, a boat that was actually one of five vessels that was left unscathed in the Japanese bombings of Pearl Harbour which that made the sunken boat that much cooler that it was part of such a huge moment in history. We began by going down to sixty feet and completely circled the 130 foot vessel. We got the chance to see some blue headed wrasse and many other schools of fish that reside around the boat. After circling the boat we entered in the side ames traversed the maze of rooms and corridors of the boat. In the entrance room there was a sign that said “Enjoy your dive” and the room after tht there was a table with a phone and lamp, which was very cool to see. Something else extremely cool about the Kodiak Queen is that it has a giant hollow metal octopus on top of it with arms 80 feet long surrounding it. After exiting the boat, we floated up into the hollow head of the hollow octopus for group picture with everyone on the trip. Exiting the head, we headed up to the stern of the boat to get a look around and than surfaced. Once everyone returned to the Sea Dragon, we headed out to Dive BVI and Jesuit’s own coral nursery, essentially a collection PVC pipe “trees” with baby staghorn corals hanging from them. Immediately diving 20 feet into the water, Owen and I encountered two large silver tarpon swimming very close to us, a freaky yet really cool experience. Once reaching the tree we would clean, we got straight to work scrubbing off algae and breaking off both razor clams and fire Coral that attached themselves to the pipe. We cleaned the trees so the clams and algae would not interfere with the growing corals that will one day be transported to a reef. The fire coral was a challenge because if i touched it or the shards I created, it stung my hands. Needless to say my hands got destroyed but it was still a really cool experience.
After that we travelled to Biras Creek to moor with the other dive boat and have our regular lunch. Once lunch was over we spent an hour of everyone jumping off the second deck into the water. The highlight of this portion off the day for me would have to be Robbie’s belly flop. Next up on the agenda was a snorkel to see the mangrove ecosystem of Biras Creek. I learned that the mangroves roots in the salt water protect the water from sediment and also protect the land from erosion. Many young fish could be see in the roots as it protects them from larger predators as well as many sea pearls and a couple corals. I did see a very large 5 foot long barracuda on the return trip to the boat, and a couple people reported seeing a 6 foot long hammerhead. Once back on the boat, we travelled back to Virgin Gorda for a lasagna dinner and to prepare our presentations for tomorrow.
I’m really excited to present my findings on sponges size relating to the speed of it’s waterflow process. My group and I worked very hard on data collection and creating a presentation to present our findings to the instructors so hopefully it will go well. Also on the agenda for tomorrow is a service project aimed towards helping the local school with housecleaning project.
