Location: Great Harbor, Peter Island
Today on Vela Vita, we woke up LUCKYY! We got the opportunity to meet Shannon (a conservationist and turtle specialist in the BVI) and go turtle tagging! Apparently, no other boats or programs get to do this, and we weren’t even guaranteed a spot to do it with Shannon, but thankfully, she squeezed it into her busy schedule! We spent the first 3 hours of the day at Dead Man’s Bay snorkeling and free diving for turtles led by Shannon. Antonio said he saw 14 turtles, more than anyone else, but I think it might have been the same one 14 times, who knows.. When we finally caught a turtle, everyone swam at full speed back to the boat, where the 48cm turtle was being examined by Kyler, Perry, and, of course, Shannon. Tagging turtles is kind of like getting a piercing; it’s like giving them new jewelry at the same time as protecting the population. After all that, we set sail to the dive site. Josie and Mahe were tanning on the top deck, while on the bottom deck, Sonja, Ellie, Kylie, Juno, Antonio, Ari, Tyler, and Maren were working on their fish IDs. Juju (Julia) and Emi were sitting to the side playing games in a notebook. After sailing for a little, we arrived at the dive site which was in my opinion the coolest dive so far. It was a huge wreck called Willy T which had skeleton pirates all over and around, some fighting with huge swords and others sitting in the bar drinking rum, we all took loads of pictures. Juju took pictures of Sonja blowing the pirate captain a kiss and walking the plank. On the sail after the dive, music was blasting while Tyler and Antonio were making dinner, while Juju, Sonja, and Emi were dancing to Macarena. Antonio, Juno, Kylie, and Ellie also joined in for the dance after a few beats. Later, right before eating dinner, we all did our daily ocean shower, and spotted a Pink Meanie jellyfish, which scared everyone out of the water. Kylie almost got stung, but avoided it just in time. Then, when it was dinner, we were lucky enough to get a visit from Big Mike and ate dinner with him. We ended the day with an epic dab. #BRING BACK THE DAB!
Signing off, Juju🍕