Today, the reef team surveyed two sites. At the first site, there were hardly any reefs. We then swam across a channel to a motu where there were two small reefs we were able to survey. This area was on the ocean side and not protected, so there was a heavy surge and was hard to survey. Aimee surveyed the invertebrates and within one transect from zero to five meters she found 91 sea urchins! After the first site we continued to our second site that was behind a restaurant called Puffy’s Bar and Grill.

The second site was beautiful. The visibility was good and there was not as much surge as the first site. We saw a variety of fish that kept the site interesting. The corals were mostly Porites covered with macro algae called Turbinaria. There was way more of this macro algae found on the second site when compared to the first site. The highlight of our day was on the second transect at our second site where we saw a Moray eel that was about five feet long. After completing four 10 meter transects at the second site we met up with other groups at a different beach north of the airport, where we helped complete surveys with the lagoon and sandy beach teams.