service learning day 3

Today, we started off the day with discussing and planning when we will dive and set our traps, and when we will collect the traps. Together as a group we came up with a plan to do our dives to set the traps we made, also the dives to retrieve our traps, and the days to go through our findings. As a group, we decided that on December 9th or 2nd, we would do our first dive to set the traps out by the docks. For the dives after that, we so far have planned on January 10th, February 14th, March 21st, and April 18th where we would not only collect the previous traps and analyse/document the findings we get, but also reset the traps so that we can get more data for the next time. After our group discussion as a group, most of us went into the lab to continue to build our traps, while some others moved to a separate room to start on their diving certifications. Our first group, which was in the lab, started a new process of building traps. This process includes taking a PVC pipe and using 26 strings and one zip tie, to attach each bunch of strings to the pipe. We as a group decided on using 3 bunches per pipe. We will then attach these pipes to the side of the dock. We are hoping to collect our traps at around every two weeks so that they will not be damaged or removed. Then after lunch, we used the water and algae from some of our group members when they went down to the dock to collect it for us to examine. We were each given one container full of the sea water and algae. Then we each examined them under the microscopes to see what we would find. Overall it was a fun and exciting day for us. We looked at some of the species we will find in our traps and it was great to get some knowledge on them before we start our dives. Those of us that worked on our dive certifications spent the day watching instructional videos on the basics of diving, in order to prepare for our pool dives and, later in the year, our open water dives. The topics covered in the videos ranged from proper use and maintenance of gear to emergency procedure and safety protocols. It was a pretty filled day and we accomplished a lot. We were overall pleased with how the day went.