Our First Dive! Location: Coral Gardens - Great Dog Island, Virgin Gorda, BVI Day 2 by Wayne & Karen Brown

Cori helps us load all of our dive equipment on the boat and we leave the dock for a short 15 minute trip to our first dive site, Coral Gardens, off the rocky cliffs of Great Dog Island. As we approach the site Corri tells us how people in the BVI are helping to protect the BVI coral reefs. One way coral reefs can be damaged is by people dropping their boat anchors on the corals. In the BVI all the dive sites have special moorings that boats can tie onto. This way boats don't drop their anchors on the coral reefs. Corri shows us the large orange ball floating in the water. This is the float that is connected to the mooring line that we will be tying our boat onto.

Before we get in the water Cori takes a minute to tell us about Coral Gardens. It gets its name from all the pretty corals that grow here, like a garden. The coral reef starts at 15 feet deep and continues out from the island until it steeply slopes down to the sandy bottom at 50 feet underwater. One unique thing about this dive site is a sunken plane wreck resting on the sandy bottom at 54 feet deep!

Cori helps us gear up for our dive and we easily step into the water off the back of the boat. She hands us our cameras and diver vehicles (DVs) and we zoom off to explore the reef and look for the sunken plane wreck.

Just under the boat are lots of corals. It really is like a garden of corals. The corals here look a lot healthier than the corals we investigated off the island of St. Kitts on our 2001: A Sea Oyssey Expedition. In St. Kitts the corals were dead or covered with algae and and sediment. Here the algae does not cover the corals and there is no sediment covering the reef either.

There are a few places where coral is dead or damaged, but we are surprised that the corals here look so good. There were some major hurricanes that came through the Virgin Islands a few years ago. These hurricanes damaged the coral reefs. Big waves broke and tipped over corals. All the rain water ran off these hilly islands and into the sea. Corals can only survive in salt water, so the fresh water that flowed into the sea damaged corals that were close to the surface.

The government of the BVI works to protect the coral reefs here. In addition to the boat moorings the government has made these reefs off-limits to fishing. One of the reasons that the coral reefs in St. Kitts were covered with algae was that fishermen caught the fish that usually ate the algae. Just like if your dad does not cut the grass for a while it grows up and covers everything...Well, without the fish to eat the algae it grew up and covered everything.

We cruise on our DVs over the shallow coral reef where the reef slopes down into deeper water. We are at the edge of the slope, about 30 feet underwater. We notice the corals appear even healthier here. This could be because the deeper corals were not affected from the hurricanes as much as the shallower corals.

We cruise along the edge of the reef looking for the sunken plane. Finally we can see a dark form in the distant blue. It is the plane wreck!. As we zoom closer to the plane we see that it doesn't look much like a plane anymore. The wings are gone. The body of the plane is not tube-shaped like other planes, but box-shaped. The windows are also not round, either, but square. Instead of an airplane this looks more like a bus with a pointy nose! The fish don't care what it is. They like it as a new place to live and hide. Inside the plane we see small schools of fish hiding in the shadows. This plane is now just another underwater habitat. This plane is slowly becoming part of the reef. As we cruise along the side of the plane we can see that corals, sponges and algae are growing on the plane. After a long time this plane will look like just another part of the coral reef.

We would like to go inside the plane and check-out the cockpit, but we don't have time. We have a long cruise to get back to the boat and we want to make sure we have enough air for the cruise back.

We get back to the dive boat just as our dive computers show us that we are getting low on air.

Cori is waiting for us to help us out of the water as we tell her about everything we have seen on our dive.

Today we have seen the coral reefs and an artificial reef, the plane wreck. Join us tomorrow as we explore the most famous of all the Virgin Islands wrecks - the HMS Rhone! (This wreck appeared in a famous Hollywood movie called, The Deep. This movie was written by the same author who wrote the book Jaws. Ask your local video rental store if they have it.)

Best Fishes
Wayne & Karen

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Dive BVI divemaster Cori tells us about what will find at Coral Gardens.

We are ready to go into the water for our first dive! In front of Karen is one of our yellow diver vehicles (DVs).

Karen cruises between some large mounds of corals.

On her diver vehicle Karen cruises over the edge of the sloping reef and sandy bottom, looking for the sunken plane.

54 feet underwater - Karen cruises along a sunken airplane wreck as a large horse-eye jack swims by.