I haven't postsed in several days... No charters this week as of yet and I'm still letting my head clear from whatever bug it was I had, along with a mild case of food poisoning, so I've been out of the water.
Charters should be starting up again at the end of the week, which is a good thing because I'll be able to give my new hire some days. Early May is looking to be pretty busy, and late may is booking up for Memorial Day and such.
This is a collector urchin, or "pebble collector urchin" which is one of the most common urchins we see during the day. They tend to collect garbage, broken bits of coral and such on them. I've aways thought it might be as camouflage because they do not have sharp nasty spines as other urchins do- don't quote me on that but it makes some sense. You can pick these guys up. If you do, take a look at the "smooth" part between the rows of spines... it's loads of urchin feet and they're cool to watch as they move. After 20 or 30 seconds, the urchin is likely to stick to you. I generally only pick these guys up to feed to helmet snails (look though the archives, I've got a nice picture of a helmet snail "pouncing" on a collector urchin in there somewhere) if I find a snail on a dive.
later,
Steve
When I saw the caption on the photo I thought it was a 'collector's item' urchin... It was so pretty and blue so I thought why not. A little disappointing that we're talking about pebble collecting.. ;o)
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