Location: Great Harbor, Peter Island
The day started off with a classical music wake-up song to get us all up and attentive. We proceeded to go straight into jobs and make some bomb breakfast. Breakfast consisted of egg burritos with cheese, sour cream, bacon bits, and blueberry muffins. Afterward, Sean, Jasper, Will, Megan, Paloma, Malea, Lucy, and I (the dolphins on our boat) had a conjoined lesson with the other dolphins from Good Times about quadrats and transects to prepare for our first research dive. Meanwhile, Maya, Parker, Mason, and Katie (the Neptunes on our boat) prepared for their 1st Solo dive! When the dolphins started their dive, they were instructed to go through 2 stations run by Kyler and Granola Will. The first station required putting the quadrant together while keeping buoyancy, putting it on a section of coral, and finding the percentages of different corals in that quadrant.
The second section required swimming 30 meters with a transect and counting the amount of fan coral you see along the way. During Neptune’s Neptune’sy navigated their way to the wall, went along it for a while, and then made their way home without getting lost! Unfortunately, Mason sat out this Neptune dive as he wanted to give his eardrum a break because it felt a little off. When everyone surfaced, Paloma and Malea made us a bunch of grilled cheese sandwiches to munch on after our successful dives. We took apart our kits and reset them up on a new tank to prepare for the Willy T!! This dive consists of a wreck with skeletons in action placed around it. Luckily, Mason was able to go on this dive so all the Neptunes could get their second wreck diver dive down! They took down slates and attempted to draw the wreck while holding buoyancy underwater.
On the other hand, the Willy T was the Dolphin’s Dolphin’sgital photography dive, and Megan brought down a banana as a prop. When we got back to the boat, we all relaxed for a while, did Fish ID books, logged our dives and started on dinner. This evening, we had Thanksgiving dinner, which consisted of stuffing, mashed potato, chicken, and green bean casserole. For squeeze, the question was, what was your favorite part of the overall trip so far? To top off the squeeze, we collectively decided to take all the spoons from the three boats we were rafting with and bring them back to our boat for “safe-keep,””””””” Final”””” and most importantly, it’s Wednesday!