8
Location: Anegada
Today, I had to wake everyone up at 7:15 because I was skipper (which is pretty late by the way). We had cereal for breakfast and packed up all of our laundry. At about 9, we got on the dingy to meet the cab to take us to go turtle tagging. We went to Old Anegada Yacht Harbor where we met a guy named Richard. He has worked with boats his whole life, and he was the one who took groups out to get the turtles. The first group was Bonnie, Ashley, David, and me and it was the coolest group ever. We drove about 20 minutes out into the water when we saw our first turtle.
We used a technique called rodeo style where you chase the turtle until it gets tired and then you literally belly flop on them and grab them. After chasing down the first turtle for a while, Ashley jumped in and missed and same with Bonnie and I. When I jumped in the second time, I finally grabbed the turtle and pulled him up! I named him Andy Chet. Andy for Anna and Chet (short for Chester) for Bonnie’s male alter ego. On our way back, we saw a second turtle that basically jumped into our boat as David said. We all know he just didn’t want Elliot to get mad at him for letting us go for another one. In the next group, Jacob and Lily both caught one. Lily named hers Captain and he was giant. I still don’t know how she lifted him up. Jacob named his Yurtle the Turtle. The last group caught 3 turtles; two caught by Justin named Flash and Admiral and one caught by Kat named Bubba. Doing measurements on the turtles was sort of challenging because they try to bite you, but after a while, it gets easier to handle them. Bonnie, Sophie, Drew, and Rami released them after they had all been tagged. After that, we went to go get money off of the boat and then we had some shore time. We also watched a documentary on turtles in the hotel on shore. Even though it was interesting, unfortunately about four people fell asleep, including myself (its been a long day). After the movie, we got back to the boat and showered and I almost made Lily cry. She is very afraid and sharks and jellyfish so I pretended that I saw a shark and some jellyfish in the water and I started screaming. She almost peed her pants she was so scared. It made my day. We had a delicious dinner with some French fries that Elliot bought us for winning yesterdays scavenger hunt. The fries made a great day end even better!!