Hello all,

Today it's November 5th, two nights before the full moon! Things are starting to come together at AIMS for the spawn. Colonies of Acropora millepora are collected and sitting happily in raceways. Today we prepared for the actual spawning. Here's a short breakdown of what we expect to happen:

Around nightfall (~7PM) colonies will be isolated in bins inside the sea simulator facility. You are able to see when the corals are about to go, since you will be able to see their eggs starting to protrude from the polyp. This event is called, "setting". They'll set about an hour prior to spawning. Once the corals are set, you can be pretty sure that they will spawn either that night or the night after. It's better to isolate the corals prior to them setting, since taking them in and out of the water could cause them to retract their eggs back due to stress. Once the corals have spawned, awe and excitement lasts for approximately 10 seconds. Then, it's madness. To prepare for this event we need numerous plastics. We need cups to scoop out the eggs and sperm from each colony. Eggs and sperm need to be isolated from each other. This is done with plastic sieves, bowls, and a lot of rinsing. Eggs are large and positively buoyant and sperm is small and can be washed away through the mesh in the sieve.

Once the eggs and sperm are separated, their densities need to be measured. This is done with a hemocytometer. This is a piece of glass with a grid system etched on it. You use it by placing a known volume of your sample and counting the number of cells within a grid. This will tell you how many cells you have for a particular volume. Some coral spawning biologists think it's important to put the proper concentration of sperm with eggs. This is to prevent polyspermy, where multiple sperm penetrate a single eggs, which prevents normal development.

After eggs and sperm concentrations have been quantified, the correct dilutions are calculated and proper amounts of sperm and eggs are combined for fertilization. Fertilization is when the eggs and sperm just sit in a bowl together for 2 hours. It's not that exciting. What is exciting is seeing the eggs start to divide after fertilization! The eggs splits into two cells, 4 cells, etc. At this points, you have to wash away the extra sperm, again, to avoid polysperm and general mucking up of the water. These washes require the use of sieves and more bowls. Everything has to be labeled every step of the way to avoid confusion. After the fertilized eggs are properly washed, they are stocked in culture containers at the density of your choice!

The past two days have consisted of all the preparations for this insane, once a year event. All plastics need to be bleached and washed and labeled. For me, my double stranded RNA needs to be all made and diluted into the proper concentrations. Now here are some pictures I took on my breaks:

Sponges! Phylum porifera, we'll learn about them in spring semester

Another cute pink sponge

Purple sponge, reaching out to say hello

Sea cucumber. These organisms are radially symmetrical and look like large leaches, but are extremely different than and unrelated to leaches.

Another blue sea star. These things are just too cool

Some large polyps flopping with the flow of the water 

I don't know what this is, but I know it's definitely a mollusk! You know how? It has a creeping foot and that orange patch is it's radula. It is using it's radula to scrap the algae off the side of the tank. Looks like it's doing a pretty good job. 

Guess what? You can foster orphaned wallaby babies! These ones come and hang outside until their foster mum is done with work. They are pretty cute little things. 

Well, that's the update for today. Animal sightings for today include 2 adult wallabys, just chilling and eating some grass outside. Also a wild pig was seen running around in the bushes at sunset. Apparently these wild pigs are dangerous and will charge at you, watch out! Tonight I will stay late to see if the corals will set their eggs or not. They're not predicted to spawn yet, but you never know, some loser might go tonight.