In the morning, we did a mini beach clean-up…and analyzed the trash of course. In an hour of clean-up, we collected over 90 lbs. of marine debris (trash). By mass there was by far the most plastic. I hadn’t been expecting the incredible amount of Styrofoam that washes up on the beach. There were some pretty crazy items also like a melted my little pony, a Barbie leg, a toy soldier, and a bunch of shoes. The craziest part is that beach is cleaned up a bit every week and we hardly made a dent in all of the trash there.

We went to another section of back reef to measure corals again. I did see a corkscrew anemone again. I didn’t see any other of my taxa today.

And then… we did a night snorkel. It was pretty short but I could tell everything is so different on the reef at night. It’s thrilling and a little nerve wracking. You can only see in your beam of flashlight and everyone kicks each other in the face. It is a whole other world, where you get to see the creatures you wouldn’t see otherwise (slipper lobster, squid, tiger-tail sea cucumber. All I wish is that I would have had a brighter flashlight to see even more.