Having secured funding from NSF to perform work in St Thomas, USVI, to understand the ecology of DaScPc in urchins and in environmental reservoirs, Brayan and Ian traveled to St Thomas, USVI to work with collaborators Mike Henson (NIU), Chris Kellogg (USGS St Petersburg), Bella Ritchie and Mya Breitbart (USF), Moriah Sevier, Sonora Meiling, Greg Pelose and Marilyn Brandt (University of the Virgin Islands) to kick off our 2 year, monthly time series which looks at biological oceanographic patterns in relation to ciliate load in urchins and surrounding corals. The team spent two days sampling two sites – Brewers Bay and Range Cay – sorting out kinks in sampling design, redesigning the time series to make it more biologically meaningful, and surveying the [then healthy] populations of urchins. It was quite the time, working for hours in the water to nail down appropriate protocols which would be informative down the line!