Location: Sommer's Beach, Tortola
Hey y’all! We started day 13 off strong with scrambled eggs and muffins for breakfast, made by Emi and Mahe! While we ate, we set sail to our first dive site of the day. Once we arrived, we split into our three project teams and geared up for our first-ever research project dive! For our project, we get several dedicated research dives to collect data! Antonio, Ari, and Tyler are researching how depth affects biodiversity. Josie, Julia, Mahe, and Emi are studying how different fish react to divers based on their camouflage. Lastly, Sonja, Kylie, Juno, Maren, and I are looking at how the slopes of different reefs affect biodiversity and sediment type.
After our successful dive, we hopped out of the water and started making lunch! While we ate our Tuscan bean soup, we sailed to our second dive site of the day! This dive was another self-guided research dive, where we collected more data for our projects! After that, we had some downtime while we sailed to our resting place for the night! A lot of us chilled upstairs and soaked up the sunshine, and some of us finished up our fish ID journals (because they are due tomorrow!!). Once we arrived, we took our ocean showers and got ready for our second beach BBQ!! After we were ready and all of the food was prepared, we took some dinghies to the beach! We had hot dogs, hamburgers, and AQ juice (pineapple juice and Sprite!) for dinner! After we mingled with the other boats for a while, we were all ready to come back to our home away from home! We finished our nightly chat, so we are now ready for a good night’s sleep!!!
Signing off,
Ellie 🥥