Sophie Kennedy Week 1: BIOS

Arrive Sunday night in Bermuda!!!!

A set of four tanks in the lab. 

Tuesday:

The corals after they have been put to sleep.

Tuesday June 24th was the first day in my lab with Dr. de Putron and two other interns: Annie and Kevin (both of whom are in college). Immediately I was put to work recording data, transferring coral planulae to settlement containers, recording the temperature data of each tank and uploading the HOBO software to the computer. HOBOs are tiny instruments used in each tank to record the temperatures every 15 minutes. The lab consists of 16 tanks: 4 high light & high temp, 4 low light & high temp, 4 high light & low temp, 4 low light & low temp tanks. There is also an outdoor lab where the live corals are separated in individual containers. Because corals only release their planulae at night, we “put them to sleep” around 5:00. Putting the corals to sleep is done by placing containers with mesh at the bottom at the end of each corals’ bowl handle. The mesh allows water to flow through but captures the planulae for collection the next morning.

This is a HOBO with a weight attached to it. Each tank has at least one HOBO . 

Overall B.I.O.S. is a spectacular environment: friendly people, an amazing view, and loads of equipment. The community is very similar to Peddie’s. They even organize soccer (football) on Mondays and Thursdays after work. In addition, lab days always consist of hard work, jamming out to music, and making jokes.

Wednesday:

Wednesday was my first full day in the lab. I started off collecting the planulae the corals released the previous night. Collecting planulae can be done by pipetting each planulae from the mesh container into a new container- counting each one as I go. Next the two interns and I brought the planulae to the inside lab where we separated the planulae into settlement containers which is done by:
1. Checking the tanks to ensure that the ones you plan to add settlement containers will not exceed five containers.
2. Label the settlement container
3. Fill the container with the specific tank’s water
4. Add 2 preconditioned tiles
5. Taking the planulae from a certain container (each container is labeled representing each coral) then depending on the amount of planulae recorded the planulae are pipetted again into the settlement containers. Usually about 50-100 planulae are added to settlement containers and most corals have around 3 or 4 settlement containers each day.  
6. Close off the settlement container with a mesh topping and place in the specific tank.
When all the collected planulae were placed in settlement containers, I entered all the data from the day into the computer while the interns examined 48 hour settlement containers. Because they found few settled planulae they placed the settlement containers back into the tanks for examination after 72hours.

Thursday:

On Thursday I came to the lab and started collecting the coral planulae. While most mesh containers had normal amounts of planulae some had around 900. When I was in the outside lab, the water was so clear that I saw a decent size hog fish swimming right in front of me (a delicacy in costal regions). After finishing the process of putting the planulae into settlement containers, I began to look for settled planulae. There were many planulae that began to settle but in the time period (72 hours) had not completely settled. These unsettled ones had more of an oval shape. The settled ones however were rounder and when blown on using a pipet did not float away.

Friday:

Friday I collected planulae again and many corals produced very few (10 being the least) and one had a lot of planulae: 1,735. While I did that, the interns replaced the water in the tanks which was a complicated process including a lot of different hoses and constant temperature monitoring. I ended the day looking for settlements using a microscope in addition to scrubbing off tiles and preparing them to be put back in the ocean in order to condition them, which allows for coral settlement. One Wednesday the interns and Dr. de Putron are diving to collect a new coral species while I snorkel above (I am not a certified scientific diver so I can’t dive with them).

View from the outside lab! I will hopefully be able to spend one night on the Atlantic research boat out at sea towards the end of July!