After learning about different characteristics of turtles and how slim their chance of survival is, we had a diving mission to collect invasive drupella snails. It was in shallow water, like 2,5m deep. We got long tweasers and big empty water bottles. You had to be careful not to mistake the snails with hermit crabs (that chose to use drupella shells as their shells). Me and another student got asigned a specific area to remove drupellas. We are doing study where we have different areas and try to analyse the long term effects of removing drupella snails from the corals bc and no one knows what is the right way to handle this situation. Short term it is of course better, but it also has some side effects of attracting damsel fish quicker which transplant algue into the eaten areas of the corals which also isn‘t good for the coral.

After the dive we had to count the drupellas, our hands smelled absolutely awful. We did our presentations on artificial reefs and were done at 6pm.

Not long after, we went to a restaurant as a group, played cards and sat at the beach and just talked for a while. I am so happy to be in this coral conservation program and to meet these different kind of people. I felt like I really needed something like this. And I am curious where it will lead me.