When I went to Savannah Bay in the British Virgin Islands, we traveled to a coral reef and went snorkeling. We saw cool fish like yellow tail snappers, damsel fish, stoplight parrot fish, and blue tang. The kinds of coral we saw were staghorn coral, brain coral and fire coral. I was swimming with my new snorkel gear which was really exciting because I had never used it all at once before. As we were exploring the edge of the reef, my dad found a small passageway between the coralheads that was deep enough to swim through. The passage way led farther into the reef. As we were swimming, we split up to check out interesting fish and coral. I kept swimming farther into the reef when I realized I was in the middle of a deep circle surrounded by fire coral and sea urchins! There was an open passage, but it was too shallow for me to swim through, and I was not able to walk out of the circle because I had my flippers.

I had no choice but to float out of the reef’s death trap. So I put myself in a position that would make me float on the very surface of the water and used flutter kicks to swim against the wind and tide. When I finally got out of the horror zone, I headed back to the dinghy where the others were. It was a long swim, but I did not really care. I was just glad I was out of the passage. As I was getting to the edge of the coral reef, I had a new problem. My mask was filling up with water and my snorkel was clogged. I was kind of bummed, but I did not mind really because I am getting better at clearing them. As I got in the dinghy, I started up the engine while the others worked on pulling up the anchor. After that, we zoomed home.