Today like every other started with a prayer and some breakfast, this time our cabin hosted it so we had to get up extra early and set it up. Finishing up with breakfast we followed our routine and hopped on the taxi with Glenn and headed out to the docks. On the agenda for today was a wreck dive, a cleaning dive, and a mangrove snorkel. For the wreck dive both boats headed out to the Kodiak Queen, a new shipwreck artificially sunk under a year ago. For being so recent the wreck had strong signs of life and a thriving reef ecosystem, which made the dive much cooler to see all different types of fish. Some of the fish, such as the jack knife, are not native to the area, but found shelter on the shipwreck. On a side note, the Kodiak Queen was originally a boat in Pearl Harbor and was one of five boats to survive the attack. After contacting government agencies they were able to sink the boat. This was our deepest dive so far reaching 65′ at the bottom of the boat, and was by far one of the coolest dives yet. We saw multiple fish including jack knifes, dog snappers, juvenile yellow snappers, and a barracuda. After finishing up with the wreck dive we packed up and headed to North Virgin Gorda where we keep the coral nurseries. At this dive we went down to the coral trees to clean them and look over them to check their overall health. The trees were composed of PVC pipe in a cross shape with three or four shelves and a buoy on top. Starting from the top down my partner and I cleaned the boy and each “branch” of the tree. I personally used a barbecue grill brush to scrape away the algae, excess coral, and barnacles. The only downside about having to scrape the excess coral is that it was fire coral, and it would float around and end up stinging me. I only came out with two stings in my neck and arms which weren’t bad at all. After cleaning up we went up to the surface and had lunch on the boats. I had a chicken wrap and a turkey sandwich, which wasn’t half bad. After that we relaxed for roughly a half hour and jumped off our boats. Since the boats were double deckers, we obviously jumped off the second story. We had competitions of who could dive off and do some topsy turvies, a Virgin Gorda spinoff of the 360. Finishing up lunch we held a brief meeting over mangroves where we learned about red mangroves, white mangroves, and black mangroves. We were only able to see the red mangroves which take root in the water and in land. They act as a sort of wall and help to stop sedimentation into the water which kills corals. Also, if you were to take the same amount of mangroves as forests, the mangroves would be able to filter out the air pollutants three times better than forests. On the snorkel we saw a barracuda, a sting ray, and some smaller juvenile fish. Heading back to the boat we embarked on a boat race back to the harbor, obviously we won because our boat was superior. Once we docked we headed back to our casas to clean up, and then to the wifi room to eat some dinner. We had some fresh lasagna and garlic bread, which went fast, and then started to wrap up our projects and start tonight’s blog. Finishing out today I’m sat here blogging about to go play some Monopoly with my friends in the plum cabin.
