Location: Cane Garden Bay, Tortola
Today was a great day! All tired after the great beach bonfire last night, we were awoken with some very loud music. We then ate wonderful oatmeal prepared by Robbie and Elise, which was quickly followed by dishes done underway. When we arrived, we went off to Good Times for a briefing on turtle tagging. This involves measurements, pictures, and installing a tracker and tag. However, we first needed to catch a turtle. To do this, we piled into a dinghy and dragged five snorkelers behind it on a rope. When you were being pulled, it was your job to look around underwater, and if you saw a turtle, you had to free-dive down and grab it. I spotted one turtle, but it swam away when it saw us, and we unfortunately had no other luck. In the end, we did get to drag all the boys very fast behind the boat, per their request. Rudy was the reigning champion of this game. After we returned from turtle tagging, it was time to dive. For the Dolphins, this was a research dive for our projects, and for the Neptunes, it was an Underwater Naturalist dive. Robbie, Grace, Marin, and Madison had a navigation mix-up underwater that made Marin use half of her PSI on laughing alone. When we surfaced, it was raining, which we call a “free shower” here. We then went to Cane Garden Bay to refill our water tanks before heading back to Shark Point for our second research dive. Elise, Lucy, and I had great success in collecting data on feather duster worms. While the dolphins did this, the Neptunes got to go on a dingy dive to a sight called “The Pinnacles.” This was a fun dive for them, and Liam and Alex practiced their bubble rings at the safety stop. We then moved back to Cane
Garden Bay, where we ate Cara’s favorite meal, Thai Red Curry. We squeezed on the roof and had a wonderful time ending the squeeze by crawling around like cats. We are now ending the night with a beautiful sunset and are about to rest up for our big hike day tomorrow! We cannot wait to call you all!