Sophie Kennedy Week 2: B.I.O.S.

Brain Coral I saw at the reef 

Hi guys! I hope all of you are enjoying your labs and finding your research interesting!

This week has been quite busy between coral spawning, collection, replacing the tank water, and collecting a new species of coral- Favia Fragum. Wednesday was in particular a crazy day. We originally planned to SCUBA dive that day to collect the Favia, yet encountered many conflicts; not only was it a busy planulae collection day and settlement check day but my P.I. injured her back in addition to having a few bad storms in the area. Once the weather cleared we prepared to leave, which was a lengthy process of retrieving the boat from the mooring, preparing the SCUBA gear and supplies and then actually boarding the boat. I really enjoyed Wednesday because I experienced both the lab and fieldwork while spending quality time with my P.I. We struggled to row a tiny boat with uneven ores to and from the moored boat- lets just say we had quite a few laughs.

Although this week was supposed to be quieter than usual, the corals decided to keep spawning after their normal time period (around 7 days after new moon). We can’t complain because we have had excellent settlement results. With each day B.I.O.S. gets more exciting to me. Just today Annie and I jumped in the ocean for a quick swim during our lunch break.

Working with the Favia is a lot less time consuming because I don’t have to count each individual planulae during the collection in the morning and when settling them later that day. As the days go on our tanks are filling up with tiles covered in settled planulae. We had to add four more tanks this week and even those are filling up quickly.

On Friday, my P.I. encouraged me to complete two of the four open water dives I have left in order to complete my SCUBA certification and so I spent half the day diving. It was awesome to get in the water for part of the day and meet some of the other interns. A few were locals and some others go to Princeton! I really appreciate that B.I.O.S. is such a friendly community because I keep meeting interesting people and learning about their projects. Just across the hall a group is studying Sea Urchin genes to better understand why they live such long lives and are cancer resistant.  

The Favia my PI, Annie and Kevin collected. They chislled them off different parts of the reef and then put them into plastic bags in order to transport them to the lab. 

My dive instructor