October 13, 2011
While we are at Cap Ternay, GVI gives us the opportunity to give back to the community. We have the possibility to give marine biology lessons to the kids at the International School down in Port Launay or play with the kids and take them snorkeling lessons at the President’s Village orphanage.
This week was the start of the marine biology lessons at the International School. We had the possibility to either start right away, wait a couple of weeks or not do it at all. Approximately 10 of us signed up to do it right away, and we went this week to give lessons to 6th graders, so from 11-12 years old. The lessons happen right on the beach in front of their school.
These kids are extremely bright for their age, and they speak 20 languages all together, each probably speaking at least 4. Their parents are mostly diplomats, ambassadors and CEOs. They were all really excited to see us and were all dying to tell us what they already knew. For the first hour we split into small groups and gave them some facts about our assigned topics. This week we covered prehistoric times. A group took care of explaining the Pangea and the creation of continents and oceanic drifts, another one was talking about extinct marine species, and my group (Emily and I) discussed the living fossils, meaning sharks, turtles, nautilus and crocodiles mostly.
I am so happy I finally got to talk about sharks and how awesome they are. We had created crosswords for them and they did them in the blink of an eye. For the second hour we just played games on the beach, marine biology related of course. I think everyone had a lot of fun!
On base, everything is going smoothly. We now have had all our lectures on corals and have been doing “coral spot” dives, where the staff points at coral and we have to tell them which species it is. Yesterday we had our first “turtle dive”. We got dropped in buddy pairs all around the bay and surveyed the area for turtles. One person was the navigator, and the other one (me) was in charge of taking notes, holding the dSMB and taking photos. It was probably the worst dive of my life. The dSMB would get tangled every two seconds, my regulator let water in and my “buddy” would not wait for me and I had to race after him the whole dive. I was extremely frustrated by the end of the dive , and the only positive thing is that we got to see three beautiful Hawksbill turtles, and I had the chance to get some great shots of these little guys:
Our plans for this weekend are looking great. On Friday we have our usual braii, and the theme is Tribal. All of our costumes should make for some great photos. On Saturday, we rented a 6 person apartment in Beau Vallon. We’ll spend the whole weekend there, enjoy the beach, the town and some other water activities. On Saturday night, some of us are going for a night dive with the Underwater Center in Beau Vallon, which I am SUPER pumped about! More party time is planned on Saturday night now that we know all the bartenders in town, and we should be heading back to base on Sunday night. Just going with the flow!
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