Where is that puppy?
August 14 and 15: We welcomed the arrival of Pam and Shelby to the BURR team here at KML! Shelby's arrival meant late-night sampling and cell counting (and popsicle eating of course) for the completing of the Briarium project. After 2 days of sampling, the experiment is finally coming to a close! It has been weird the past day not to worry about the corals; "Its raining, are they covered? Is it too hot, should we put the shade cloth on? What is the chiller temperature? Should we put another ice container in?"
Shelby, Rachel and Anke hard at work sampling Briarium polyps
August 16: Cassiopea polyps were deployed in the KML marina today, despite the tropical storm that was making its way through Long Key. While Rachel was hard at work getting the polyps out in the bay with Noel's help, Mac, Anke and Shelby made the trip up to Key Largo for car rental issues.
Cassiopea polyps out in the bay!
By 1:30pm Andrew captained the eager crew of Mac, Noel and Rachel for an afternoon on the boat with several stops planned: First! to Cheeca Rocks to check out the Montastrea at the reef there, since Noel will be putting his samples back out there in a few months. The reef was beautiful, the M. fav looked ok, but a lot of corals were bleached. Moon jellies galore.
Mac and Noel diving at Cheeca Rocks and Noel taking a break to smile for the camera!
Second stop! To check the visibility at Alligator Reef and get sea water in the Deep Blue water. Last stop of the day was Craig Key where Mac collected Briarium samples while Noel and Rachel dismantled Ann's (Mac's previous MS student) Porites divaracata set up.
The day did not wind down until well past 3am where Anke was busy sampling the rest of her Briarium polyps, Rachel and Shelby were filtering water (and trying not to get eaten alive by mosquitoes), and Noel was siliconing the kreisels all in preparation for the first day of spawning tomorrow! whew!!
Shelby, happily finishing the rest of her Briarium sampling!
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