The first three places that Ashlynn searched for her test subjects, tiny coral-eating seasnails called Drupella, there were none. This made her nervous, but that there were lots at the next site. It was bittersweet for Ashlynn as she knew she needed them for her research, but it was bad news for the reef because there were so many of them.
Here are the snails in their temporary tank inside just after being collected.
It didn’t take long before the snails discovered the coral bits (which she had to collect weekly as their only source of food) in the tank and start munching.
It made her laugh that they could climb between the tanks.
She didn’t think twice when her lab advisor instructed her to use these outside tanks. She spent several days setting up the tanks before realizing that the temperature of the water coming in wasn’t controllable and there was no way to cool the tanks to what she needed.
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