Today, once again, started with the usual cereal and juice, but at least they had apples this time. However, as bland as the breakfast has seemingly become, today was the most exciting day yet. Today we started out the day with hearing from a British virgin island sea turtle expert. We learned about sea turtle conservation and what types we’d be seeing today as well as how to catch and tag them. My boat was lucky enough to get to go sea turtle hunting first. We arrived at a bay known as Little Dix Bay, connected to a quaint yet not as cool resort as ours. We were simply told grab your fins and snorkel and swim around the mile or so of water until you find a turtle and catch it. My partner Harrison and I swam for only about 10 minutes before we saw our first green sea turtle and we chased it for about a quarter mile before it activated the hyperdrive and proceeded to disappear from us and everyone else. It went back to being empty sea grass for about another 20 Minutes before another group mate chased a green sea turtle right in front of us. At that point I told myself he wasn’t getting away again. I chased him for what felt like a few miles. I even got to a point where I was swimming over him almost perfectly. All I had to do was reach down and grab it. However, when I reached down to attempt to grab the shell, it then decided to be annoying and only stay about a foot or two out of my reach. We chased this turtle around the bay for the whole hour before we were called back in. Even when we got back in the boat Garret, from another group, found the turtle on his way back, and of course I immediately dove in. However, just like before, he was always out of reach. We then proceed to Savannah bay to be towed around by the boat and some water skiing ropes in order to try and spot hawksbill sea turtles. It was overall unsuccessful, but we did get towed over the edge of the reef over a chasm leading into the chasm filled with all things kraken-like. It was slightly terrifying. We then, because it was unsuccessful, headed back to the marina to have lunch and go to the next activity. We headed to mango bay next to study invertebrates. We got down there after hearing the other group saying they’d found an octopus and giant hermits etcetera. Anyways, the dive instructors then told us to disregard anything in the tubs and go snorkel to find any in invertebrates. Harrison and i didn’t find anything too cool or interesting, but we did see a shark about 20 feet from us. That’s when we decided to head back towards the shore. At that point Becca decided to come out with us to make sure we made it back without disturbing anything and with all of our limbs. Other than theshark however, we didn’t see or catch anything interesting. We instead went back into shore to see what everyone else had caught and identify it. We got to see two giant hermit crabs, two sea urchins, an octopus, fire worms, and plenty of sea slugs and shrimp. We got to hold the sea urchin which had tentacles that latched onto my hand ten I picked it up, meaning I could turn my hand over, shake it, etc and nothing would happen. It felt as if rice and straws were latching into my hand. We then focused on the octopus which had made its home in a conch shell which also made it easy to catch. This little guy pulled everything we dropped into the tub into his shell. Whether it was shells or crab claws, it yanked it into its conch. That was that. We then head back to the resort to work on our project for an hour before eating Mexican style wraps for dinner. They were pretty good, but they made me crave tacos. We then watched a movie called Chasing Coral. This was a documentary about researchers and cinematographers making a film about the massive amount of coral bleaching and death going on around the world. It really put all of the statistics we read about in class into perspective. It was also very depressing seeing that much life sucked away in only a couple of months, especially because it was caused by human carbon emissions. Anyways it was a sad, point of view changing end to an exciting day, but I’m extremely excited about tomorrow’s shipwreck dive to the Kodak queen and to the coral farms to clean coral.
