What a fabulous way to turn 19! We took an early morning dive on an unprotected patch reef and collected the same type of data as yesterday. Now the moment you’ve all been waiting for… *insert drumroll* … We found that the urchins are significantly bigger and more numerous in the protected reef area!

I hope everyone appreciated that information because we spent about 3 hours trying to crunch those numbers. I think we’re all a little sleepy and dehydrated! Eventually we put a nice poster together to show all of our data to Scott and Adrienne, and we presented it to them on the dock.

The coral on the patch reef was incredibly beautiful today! I didn’t identify any new species, but I did see a fire coral that had grown over a sea fan. It was so elegant, so check out the picture below. There were also comb jellies floating around the reef. They don’t sting, but they startled me a few times when I swam into them!

The best part of the day was definitely dinner. We were sitting around the table, discussing which character from Finding Nemo best represents Therese, when Scott and Adrienne brought a cake with candles to the table and sang happy birthday. They made a pineapple cake just for me! It was a very delicious and un-Belize-ably sweet surprise.