Diadema Urchin

Guardian: Morgan Cotrel

Echinothrix diadema

these three urchins have been on Barry the Bommie at Normanby Island since 2010

"My five teeth were clicking as they sliced through some particularly soft coral rock and I was gorging on some tender ice cream-like algae when I felt a shadow pass over me. I quickly moved my spines to protect myself but then I saw it, the crabotterhubird, I thought they were just stories told to stop you from wondering out of your hole during the day but there it was, it walked on two fat bendable spines, one that had five blunt spines on the end of it, the other had claws, it had two other spines at the front of its body, one was the super long foot-tearer-off-er beak of a long-billed butterflyfish and the other was the extendable mouth of the dreaded helmet shell. For a mouth it had the beak of a triggerfish and it had these two feathered fins that belonged to those deathly shadows that swim over the water. I couldn’t move because the helmet shell mouth had infused paralysing acid over me or perhaps it was just fear that paralysed me, and then I was thrust into darkness and a horrible emptiness filled me as the water diasppeared and air rushed in. The next thing I knew I was on this flat empty board, completely surrounded by light and an incredibly long shiny silver tooth was streaking towards me …. and then I woke up"