The day was finally here. A day we weren't diving but yet I was even more excited than ever before. Today was the day we would go search and tag sea turtles. To begin, a sea turtle expert who used to work for the government on conservation came and gave a presentation on why sea turtle populations declined and how efforts can be made to save them. The entire time I was hyperactive due to the anticipation of seeing sea turtles and being right next to them. When I later found out we would be attempting to catch them I couldn't contain my excitement. My goal was to get that sea turtle tagged no matter what I had to do.
The boat ride to a cove was slow similar to how it's difficult to sleep the night before an anticipated event. When we got there we had another short briefing on what exactly to do and little strategies used to tag the turtles. I snorkeled around with my dive buddy Luke in search for our first sea turtle. We were following around the reef when I remembered the presentation said the turtles enjoyed eating sea grass. I directed look that way and, sure enough, we saw a massive sea turtle that we were later informed is still a juvenile. Our first capture attempt was quite cringy. We thought we would be able to out swim the turtle or at least tire it out. I would like to say that whoever said turtles are slow couldn't have been more wrong. Within two flaps of the turtles flippers it was out of our eyesight. Luke and I were quite angry it got away so quickly despite our attempts to keep up. Our next attempt was sneaking up on the turtle while it was eating. Luke saw the turtle eating first so I stayed back making as little noise as possible. The turtle must have heard Luke at the very last second because as soon as he got his first hand on the shell it smacked his other with their surprisingly powerful flippers and shot ahead so quickly that Luke lost his grip. He slammed the surface of the water with frustration as we knew that was our last chance. Despite running out of time and finishing empty handed, I loved the experience and appreciated the opportunity just to touch the shell of the green sea turtle.
Our next activity was an invertebrate study and lab. We viewed a few invertebrates and then went out to find out own. Because our buddy group was sent off without a jar we just decided to snorkel around. Toward the end we began to just see how deep we could go while free diving. When look went down he shot back up with his eyes super wide open. He made a fin motion on his head so I went to the surface. Turns out he saw a shark so we decided it might be best if we went back to shore or closer in. Our dive master was intrigued so she went ahead and looked for the shark but it was nowhere to be seen. Unfortunately it decided it didn't want to be seen today. We got called in from our snorkel and we got to see and identify different invertebrates. My favorite was a sea urchin that rested on top of my hand and used its little suction cups to stay attached. We identified, sea slugs, hermit crabs, sea weed, and fire worms (those are scary).
Overall the day was one of the most fun we have had and I hope the other days are like this or better. Supposedly tomorrow we are diving through a ship wreck that used to be in Pearl Harbor!
