Hello Florida Keys!
The summer has flown by and it's that time of year again....
Coral Spawning 2011!
After a month's break, Anke (Mac's brilliant Post-doc), Noel and Rachel (Mac's M.S. students), and of course our fearless leader, Dr. Mary Alice Coffroth herself have re-convened at the beautiful Keys Marine Laboratory for what hopes to be a successful spawning field season. Soon to join the crew here is Shelby (Mac's PhD student), and an army of eager volunteers and coral enthusiasts!
Noel working hard on setting up kreisels
In the week before the spawning occurs, there is a lot of work that needs to be done around the lab.... making sea water runs, filtering the sea water, checking and repairing the spawning tents, prepping the wet lab for the arrival of the larvae, and, thanks to the hard work by Noel, the massive job of setting up the Kreisels!
August 11th: The morning's adventure was a trip to Alligator Reef that unfortunately was cut short by blowing out the bottom half of the engine...luckily for us we had Bill come rescue us and tug us back to KML. In the meantime, Cindy and Noel were working hard to try and fix the problem.... though it didn't rectify the situation, they get kudos for the effort!
We did get to go back out on another boat in the afternoon and made it to Alligator....the site is deep, but it looks good for Montastrea spawning, so we may be back.
Cindy and Noel trying to fix the motor and Briarium polyps!
August 12th: Our second sea water run early this morning was done in calm waters as Noel took over at the helm for Bill as we made our way to blue waters. No lobster trap buoys were hit. Way to go, Captain Noel! We got all 7 garbage bins full of water off the boat so the next group could go out in record time; about 1/2 hour! Today's work is spray painting the dive weights (much to Rachel's pleasure), doing water changes for Briarium (much to Anke's pleasure), and filtering lots and lots of sea water (much to all our pleasure).
Anke examining the Briarium polyps and Rachel spray painting the weights
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