Location: North Sound, Virgin Gorda, BVI
Today we woke up to a nice sunny morning after days of wind, rain, and clouds. Soon enough, the sun beating down on us became very hot, topping out around 100 degrees F, but we quickly got out of the heat with a morning snorkel in some red mangroves (as seen in the first photo) near our anchor spot for marine biology class. There were many incredible things to look at, and way too many to list, but a few highlights include a large tarpon swimming under me on the way over, feather duster worms on the coral, a juvenile boxfish, an anemone tucked under a mangrove root, and Cassiopeia jellyfish. The jellyfish are commonly found in mangroves and swim inverted. This was definitely a highlight of my day, as seeing one of these has been on my bucket list for a while now. After the snorkeling, the students still working on their open water scuba certification went out for more confined water skills while the other students went to dinghy school, where we learned how to operate Exy. In the afternoon, we moved to Leverick Bay and had some shore time, and got very excited over the concept of air conditioning. As of the time of this blog, we are heading to shore to a marina restaurant to get a drink and get to know each other even better!
Pictured: mangrove views; Josh, Steffen, Kaiden is getting snacks; Jill is heading onshore; views from our short afternoon onshore; sunset from Ocean Star.