Ocean slugs, eels, and puffer fish, oh my!

There is an amazing amount of ocean life right along the shoreline that is visible as we walk down the beach. The difference between high and low tide here is incredible. When we arrived the first day it was high tide, and we only saw a slight amount of the sand bar that is about 100 yards out from the beach. This creates a wave line just before the sand, and from there to the beach, there are no waves at all, so you can see everything that lives right along the beach's water. Yesterday, we went out in the morning to discover it was a very low tide, and hundred of coral peaks were visible along the water until the sand bar. It looked like a bunch of drift wood was floating in the water. Because the water was only a foot or two with the low tide, the we could see the many many ocean slugs that look like snakes, slugging along the ocean floor. These are not the highly venomous black and white banded snakes that are found along Fiji's coastline and lagoons. (Whew!) They are completely harmless but nonetheless, a reason to not venture out    during low tide. Well, that's until we saw an authentic raft hand crafted by the Fijian people called a Bilibili. It was only a few yards a way...at this point in the story. Of course, we wanted to ride the raft so Lindsey, Heather and I ventured out while Katie took pictures from the beach. There were no snakes or slugs or eels in sight so we just casually walked along the coral to the raft and then a local looked at all and waved. We thought we were in trouble from not being allowed near the special raft, but he was trying to tell us to get on it and stand up for a picture! So, we did :) It was a little harder than we thought but we got the picture and were all happy...then Heather's sandal got loose. For the first time. Paddling towards it wasn't an option as the current was taking us the opposite direction. After deciding just to wait for it to come to the raft, I reached out and grabbed it successfully. We were satisfied with our raft experience and looked up to see we were definitely not where we start...just a bit further out and the right. No big deal right? Until we realized we were floating on top of a seaweed and coral ocean floor covered in ocean slug/snakes. Did I mention these things are about 7 cm in diameter and up to a meter or two long. Knowing the waiting longer would put us in a sea of more creatures, we took a (slow) run for it, as the coral and sand are pretty hard to move quickly through. It was going well until Heather again, lost her sandal. Every person for themselves, we all kept moving. When the sandal got closer to shore, we grabbed it and decided that was enough ocean adventure for one morning. Hey, it least it beats walking up the hill at UWEC ;)