After breakfast today, we left on the boat to explore the floor reefs past the island. The first site we stopped at was beautiful and there were so many large corals, however I started to get sea sick and by the time we got to the second site I felt like I was going to throw-up in my snorkel mask. I still got out to swim around and the reef was really pretty, I just felt like I couldn’t be completely present since I wasn’t feeling great. It was still cool that Scott was able to spear a lionfish and we might get to dissect and eat them later.

We came back to the island because people were feeling sick and had time to rest before lunch. After lunch, Scott gave us more time so everyone took a nap and when I woke up I didn’t feel sick anymore. We went back out on the boat to collect sea urchins to compare the percentage of sea urchins in the MPA and out of the MPA. We stayed in the atoll so the ride was a lot smoother and the 2 patch reefs we saw were a lot shallower. We got a ton of sea urchin and I got to hold some in my hand and see them move, also Claire found a sea egg which was one of the cutest marine organisms ever.

While in the reef I saw a bunch of the common sea fans that were mostly purple, and one was a really intense purple and huge. I saw less Corky Sea fingers today in the reefs today, there might have been some in the floor reefs, but since it was so deep and I wasn’t feeling well I could dive down. I also saw some pretty large sea plumes that were also a light purplish color.

After dinner and lecture, we finished our day with a crab race. We all picked our crabs, which were supposed to be hermit crabs, but Elena and Sam somehow got large blue crabs, but they didn’t win anyway. My crab ended up not moving and then turned and went the opposite direction if the finish line:(