Today, like all of our days, started off with a breakfast. But this time, the feast was in the hands of me and my project group. Instead of waiting until 7:30 to wake up, we woke up at 7:00 to begin preparing our meal. People began to arrive at the cabin at around 7:40 to grab spots on the porch to eat. Once we had ate and cleaned the mess left behind by our peers, we learned that we would be hosting the breakfast once again tomorrow. Once we were all cleaned up, we prepared to meet Glen at 8:25. We were picked up and brought down to the boats and were warned that we would not be leaving the water until very late in the day. We loaded the boat with our diving gear and launched off towards the site of the Kodiak Queen Wreck where we would be diving today. Before beginning our dive, our divemaster educated us on the history of the wreck.
We learned that the Kodiak Queen was originally a ship that survived the Pearl Harbor bombings. It somehow ended up in the British Virgin Islands and was repurposed as a wreck. We dove down to the area of the wreck to see a giant boat with an octopus covering half of the boat. I was amazed by the sheer magnitude of the boat and wondered just how the ship was sunk but, as we got closer to the boat, I was amazed by the number of creatures that had turned the ship into their habitat. We saw crabs, jack knifes, barracudas, and many other amazing organisms. We also went inside the octopus and saw how big the piece of art was. Once we had finished surveying the wreck, we went back up to the surface. Once we had taken a break from the water, we took off to the Nurseries to help clean off some coral. We paired up and got to brushing off the coral trees. I learned very quickly not to touch the orange stuff on the PVC pipes because it was fire Coral and would burn when you touched it. As we were finishing cleaning the coral trees, we saw a group of six squid that were much more clam than the group I had seen the previous day. I was able to get up close and personal with them without them rushing away from me. After cleaning the coral trees, we made our way to an area of sea that was close to a mangrove tree forest. We took a break from diving though and ate lunch. After lunch though, we spent an hour jumping off of the boat into the water. I did a few backflips, failed a couple, and a lot of flips into the water. After fooling around with the group, we snorkeled around the mangrove forest. I saw multiple sea cucumbers, a few barracudas, and a lot of sea pearls. The sea pearls were very interesting because they are a single cell organism that reproduces by splitting off pieces of itself to make new nuclei. I was very intrigued by the many different and unique organisms that I saw on the snorkel and as I raced back to the boat, was caught off guard by the cool things that swam by me. Today has been one of my favorite days of the trip just because I was on the water for the whole day. I can’t wait for another day of snorkeling before we leave to go back to Dallas on Friday.
