We leveled up today on our length and difficulty of our snorkeling projects. We visited patch reefs inside and outside the protected area and did transects for comparison. We also collected sea urchins in a 25 minute period, then measured and ID’ed them. Compared to the no-take zone, the unprotected zone had drastically fewer urchins, which starts to give you an idea of the breadth of human impact on some of these reefs.

To be honest, I got a little distracted during the urchin collected period because there were so many worms around! I saw about 20 christmas tree worms, two social feather dusters and one split-crown feather duster. They’re really beautiful little things. There was one coral in particular covered by about 10 christmas tree worms in a variety of colors—from blue-grey to yellow to orangeish-brown. If you wave your hand in front of them they tuck themselves inside their tube to hide, then slowly reemerge after a moment. There will be pictures to come.

Sophia Streeter

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