I woke up today with a swollen bottom lip, which I’ve never had before. I opted out of the morning snorkel because my lips were numb and my best guess was that I am allergic to the silicone in the snorkel.

I stayed in listening to music till about 11 am, when everyone came back. Apparently the seas were very choppy, and people were seasick. This snorkel was also not an official project, so I didn’t miss anything I had to note in my journal.

We had lunch, it was pizza and it was amazing. After a one hour rest, we headed out on the reef, and I came with this time. I opted to not use the snorkel, in case it was in fact an allergic reaction, and so went swimming with just my mask. This was actually a lot more fun than I expected, since it gave an edge to the breathing, and I had to calculate when would be the best time to take a breath. I actually enjoyed today’s snorkeling more than I did yesterday’s.

Today’s project was to look for sea urchins. I was not amazing at this, but did catch a few. I was mostly distracted by the green algae that I finally started seeing—and I once I saw one, I saw them all. I must’ve seen at least fifty or sixty independent colonies of Halimeda tuna. I also saw three Rhipocephalus phoenix in one corner of the reef, and two fans of Udotea flabellum.

Apparently tomorrow will be at least partially dedicated to identification of algae, so I’m looking forward to my taxon’s spotlight.