Happy Valentine's Day!

Instead of sharing something heart shaped on the reef, today I'm sharing something with "heart" in its name:  the red heart urchin.  On one dive, I was pleasantly surprised to find 6 or 8 red heart urchins.  That dive was a night dive.  This urchin buries under sand during the day, and emerges at night.  After finding a couple of completely emerged red heart urchins, I began to recognize what the sand looked like when they were beginning to emerge, so I fanned my hand over the sand, creating a jet of water that washed the sand off the urchin.

This species has very short brown spines.  These urchins were about 4 inches long, and the photos were taken at depths of 15 to 35 feet.

Beginning to emerge

After the top sand was fanned off