10
Location: Great Harbor, Jost van Dyke
The morning consisted of some quality music, french toast (actually the best french toast recipe in the world, thanks Yousef), jokes, and chilling around the boat. We had a cute sail from Marina Key to our destination in Jost Van Dyke. Although a little tricky, steering at the helm was a fun and interesting experience. After lunch, we set out for our afternoon service projects–Rebuilding Island Life painting temporary homes for Island residents in need of shelter, Preserving Paradise snorkeling for lionfish and collecting data on seagrass.
We couldn’t wait to get in the water after the relatively stuffy morning!! My group worked quickly to analyze each quadrant of the ocean floor at our site in Great Harbor. I was very surprised to learn that almost all the grass we found was invasive! Hopefully, the data we collected can help the scientists learn more about seagrass in the area. We ended up having to do a second “run” of data collection because we moved our final quadrant before obtaining the exact coordinates from BZ. We were definitely all annoyed to some degree, but we definitely learned something and finished our second data collection very quickly. It was such a gratifying feeling to finish the activity, filling out the last column on the data sheet and packing up our materials–it was a highlight of the day. Here are some other ones from the shipmates
-Koko was naming the four the types of seagrass we learned about, and David walks in and yells Jackie Chan
-getting new sheets and pillowcases!!!
-Hannah jammin’ on the Uke
-Myles found a live conch shell!
-Maren getting caught in the measuring tape during Seagrassing
-Jackson is buried on the beach after Seagrassing
-Nel cracking jokes
-Another fun ocean shower
-Selma beat David aqua jogging
-Joey and Sophie found a little fish swimming around Joey’s legs, they named it Richard, and the fish stuck with them the whole afternoon
It’s the end of the day now, and we’re all really tired but excited for the other adventures/experiences we’re gonna have on the rest of our trip!!!!