Another great day in Virgin Gorda. I started the day with a nice little morning workout with me, and two of my roommates, then had another hearty breakfast of cereal, again no milk, fruits, bagels, and a power bar prepped by the Marine 2 guys. Then, we got a ride from Glen to our boats and we quickly got out on our boat and began our first of two dives today. First, we went to a quaint little diving site right off one of the islands where we saw some more squirrel fish, lionfish, and lots more different fish. My dive buddy, Noah, didn’t see me and got scared so he tried to go find me to make sure I wasn’t lost. Turns out I was slightly behind the group and he caught me up with the group so I didn’t lose everyone. Then at the end of the dive, our dive master, Jeff, used his spear gun and killed a juvenile lionfish, it didn’t even try to escape when he got close. Then we got out, had another awesome Combo and water break on our way to a coral nursery. At the coral nursery, Casey put us to work by having us clean the trees used to grow the coral. The coral trees had 50 pieces of coral apiece, 5 rows on each side of the tree, 10 rows total, with 5 pieces of coral on each row. We cleaned the algae and gunk off of the rows, as well as the monofilament line tied to each piece of coral. After that, we explored the reef and returned the ship where we saw a small school of tarpon right underneath the boat. After that, we drove over to sunshine bay where we took a nice lunch break consisting of cold cuts, mayo, mustard, cheese, bread, peanut butter, jelly (grape and strawberry), and chips. Once I had wolfed down two sandwiches, some Goldfish, and two cookies, we went on a snorkel trip inland to go see a salt pond. The salt pond was an area where sediment, fertilizer, and other pollutants that could harm the coral would wash into as well as high salt concentrated waters with their own unique environment. When we went there, some other guys and myself were allowed to try some of the salt, and when Jeff and the other instructors say that salt ponds have high concentrations of salt, they mean really high concentrations, this might have been the saltiest salt I have ever tasted. And after that, we snorkeled back to the boats, saw a sting ray along the bottom, and got in our boats, and headed back. Once my group and I got back to the homes, we prepared our light tests for the night dive, went down to the water, scoped out the location, placed the lights, and went back up to the houses and relaxed for an hour. Then, we all met at the beach for dinner and our night snorkel dive and to test our experiment.
