Shayle Matsuda

And just like you have your favorite city or your favorite place,

nature trail you like to walk on every reef is going to be a little bit different they have huge structures and these corals will have these you know these big branching corals you just look a little closer and you see their their homes to all these different kinds of animals like the more you know the more structure you have in your in the ecosystem the more different types of organisms you're going to see when you're down there and it's it's just it's

It's so exciting.

There's so much to see.

And you'll see your turtle and your shark every once in a while, which are really exciting.

But for me, it's kind of just swimming up to one kind of coral and just staring at it for a while.

And then things will start to come out.

You'll see crabs that live inside the coral.

You'll see snapping shrimp.

Sometimes you'll see eels or octopus.

You can think of it almost like a metropolis in the ocean and full of a diverse cast of players.

JILL LEPORE- Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And sometimes you forget.

There have been times when I, since I work on corals and I'm working on an experiment right now where I'm focusing on individual coral colonies, I can be upside down in the reef for like an hour at a time just staring at this one coral.

And then we'll come to the surface, and people will be like, oh, did you see that shark that went by before?

And I'll be like, what are you talking about?

So it's always still really nice to go out when you're not working and just really appreciate how lucky we are to be able to see these environments.

You know, I've worked with researchers who, you know, I'll go to a coral reef and I'll say, this is beautiful.

Look at all the diversity here.

And they'll be like, you should have seen it 20 years ago.