Reef Protector

A **Reef Protector** is a key occupation that mermaids in Atlantis can take on as part of the role system in Atlantean society. It is primarily involved with maintaining the Atlantis Reef.

## Education

In order to become a Reef Protector, a mermaid must attend 4 years of classes at a university in the Knowledge District. There, they will learn to unlock their inner magic potential and learn and practice, through firsthand experience, the spells that allow them to manipulate sea life. The first year is mainly concerned with practicing accessing the magic and in performing the necessary rituals, and is often considered the least enjoyable year due to all the rote work involved with little actual payoff. The second year is concerned with learning basic spells, such as telekinetic and telepathic control over sea life.

The third year is spent learning more advanced spells, such as the growth and diversification spells. The final year is spent in the field doing practical work, while back in the classroom students learn about why Reef Protectors are so essential and about their history, etc. After they graduate, a mermaid can immediately transition to the career. Not all mermaids may have the magical potential to be a Reef Protector; these figure it out in the first year and usually drop out to choose another career path that would suit them better.

## Spells and Techniques

Many magical spells are involved in Reef Protection. The first are simple ones such as telekinesis over sea life, the ability to direct them around, relocate life, ward off life from an area, and attract life to an area. More advanced spells involve species-specific selection, such as the ability to attract all of one species but no other life and alter their motion or living space. The second set of spells are telepathic spells that allow one to direct more advanced species, such as fish, that have brains.

The more important spells are detection spells, which alert the user to any problems in the surrounding sea life and can direct them to where the problem is emanating. Diversification spells are also important, allowing the mermaids the ability to alter the DNA or mating habits of populations in general ways. The most important spells are the growth spells, which allow a mermaid to increase the growth rate of many organisms. For instance, coral is an organism that grows very slowly, around 1-10 cm per year on average. However, coral is needed for construction and other uses in Atlantis. As such, Reef Protectors must use their magic to vastly amplify this growth rate over a hundredfold to ensure the coral can replenish itself faster than it can be harvested.

Reef Protectors work closely with farmers, and even use similar spells to farmers, but farmers typically use the spells for more narrower purposes but need to use them continuously. For instance, Reef Protectors must make sure that in general the populations within Atlantis Reef remain in balance, using spells as necessary to achieve this end, but farmers must constantly be directing their magic energy during the whole work day at the algae crops and fish they tend so they have even more control over those specific individual's growth rates.

## Importance

Reef Protectors are extremely essential to Atlantean life even if they do not seem like it on the surface. Mermaids, on a subconscious level due to their evolutionary history, associate strongly with sea life and fish. As such, if there is even a minor problem that goes uncontained, mermaids may not immediately consciously notice it, but their subconscious will sense it and this can even alter their mood, increase their stress, cause headaches and insomnia, and have other detrimental effects. In a way, mermaids live in a symbiotic relationship with the surrounding wildlife: when it thrives, the mermaids are full of energy, but when there is a problem, the mermaids will begin experiencing problems and loss of energy as well.

After the Veil was released, chemicals and other toxic chemicals from human society that have damaged countless other coral reefs across the world began to damage Atlantis Reef as well. This caused a massive surge in the demand for Reef Protectors to not only counter this new source of damage to Atlantis Reef, but to spread throughout the world and try to reverse the damage to some of the other tropical coral reefs across the globe. This started an international human-mermaid collaboration to deal with the damage to the oceans, led by Finana Ryugu, a highly experienced Reef Protector who also serves as the general ambassador between humans and mermaids.