Sandy Voegeli is a researcher at the Gerace Research Center on San Salvador in The Bahamas. The Gerace Research Center is a laboratory of the College of The Bahamas. Each year the Gerace Research Center is the host for college students from the United States and around the world who travel to San Salvador to study that island's unique geology, archeology, and tropical coral reefs. The Christmas holiday break is a busy season for the Gerace Research Center, as students use their break from classes to travel to San Salvador to do research. This Christmas Sandy worked with 140 visiting researchers.

Sandy dives and snorkels frequently at the reefs around San Salvador as part of her work at the Gerace Research Center. One of Sandy's projects is a coral-reef population survey, counting the types and numbers of corals and other marine creatures at fixed locations on the reef. For this work, Sandy measures along a line across the reef, writing down the type of coral and whether or not that coral is healthy at hundreds of locations along the line. The line allows Sandy to go back and see how the corals grow and how the population of the reef changes over time.

Be sure to read more about the Gerace Research Center on its website, http://www.geraceresearchcenter.com.