Location: Cane Garden Bay, Tortola
With only one week left in our voyage, our days are becoming more action-packed each day! Throughout the night, some students had woken up to some light rain showers, but the heavy rain didn’t start until around 5:30 am this morning. For those who hadn’t woken up to the rain, they had been woken up at 7:00 am because we were headed to Brewer’s Bay. We had oatmeal for breakfast while we were underway, which made it a little difficult to pour out the water into the bowls of oatmeal. Once we got to Brewer’s Bay, we set up dive gear and got ready to go on our second Underwater Naturalist dive. There was quite a bit of a swell in the Pinnacles, which is the name of the dive site within Brewer’s, which meant that we all needed to be extra careful when setting up our dive gear. It was quite hard to find your sense of balance due to the large swells. My dive buddy today was Jacob, and we had an amazing dive, which was led by Ri, one of our incredible dive instructors. During the dive, we needed to identify symbiotic and predator/prey relationships. There wasn’t too much in the way of predator/prey, but there were several symbiotic relationships such as zooxanthellae in corals, Flamingo Tongue Snails and Gorgonia (sea fans), and, Gobies and small shrimps that live in the sand on the ocean floor. Once we surfaced from this dive and we got on the boat and successfully put our gear away without anyone falling over, we headed over to Shark Point, which is also located in Brewer’s Bay. During our motor to Shark Point, most students took a little nap while the air compressor was being run to fill up our air tanks. Once we arrived, we picked up a mooring ball, and our chefs for today, Jacob and Pat, started preparing lunch which was quesadillas. The process of making quesadillas for 15 people is somewhat chaotic and long, so most students decided to go for a swim before lunch. After our lunch cleanup, we had some time to chill and make friendship bracelets before we had to set up our dive gear for our fun dive at Shark Point. This fun dive was a unique one. We had to dive off of a dinghy for the first time this session as well as plan and navigate the entire dive by ourselves in groups of four. When it was time to head over to Xanadu II (The boat that was moored on the reef where we dove), everyone loaded their equipment into one of two dinghies. After a short ride to the other boat, we geared up in the dinghy and back-rolled into the water. For anyone who doesn’t know what a back-roll is, essentially, what you do is completely gear up in a dinghy or small boat and sit on the edge with your back facing the water. You cross your fins and hold your gauges as well as your mask and reg and literally just fall back into the water. My group of four I was with Jacob, Olivia, and Player. We decided to take a simple approach to navigate the reef by doing two reciprocal headings. (PS Mom and Dad, I got a picture with the mug during this dive). The other groups had different approaches to their dive plan, and one of the other groups even saw a Caribbean Reef Shark, which my group did not see. We all surfaced, got back in the dinghies, and headed back to Bend The Rules. We took apart our gear, put everything back in the laz, and then took saltwater showers. After this, it was off to Cane Garden Bay, where we currently are. We filled up our water tanks and prepped dinner, which was Thai Curry, thanks to our amazing chefs (and Gus). Cleanup from dinner has just finished, and we are getting ready to have a movie night (hopefully, the movie works this time, fingers crossed). Tomorrow is going to be a great day!
-Finnley D.