After attending this conference, Alex explains: “I had the wonderful opportunity to present my first oral presentation at Benthic Ecology Meeting in SC! This project was sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) through the NOAA Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship. My talk was titled “Assessing coral damage from super typhoon Mawar on guams reefs” and for this project I had the opportunity to live in Saipan for 2.5 months! During my time in Saipan I met a lot of wonderful people and with those people I swimming across the ocean for a 1.5 mile swim to a neighboring island named Managaha.”