Post #12 - What a productive day gets you...

It's a great way to start day when first thing in the morning you check the pH in the aquaria and the levels are what you need for experiments!   Today was such a day, so we did two fertilization experiments.  The first one started about 8 this morning (after an hour of checking the pH levels) and the embryos from the last run were preserved around 7:30 p.m.  So this is what my lab bench looked like at the end of the day:

The test tubes in back and in the blue box contain the embryos and/or unfertilized eggs that have been preserved in formalin and need to be analyzed.  The smaller vials in the white foam block (scrounged from a packing container) hold preserved sperm suspensions, also waiting to be counted.   As of yesterday I was all caught up, but all these tubes will take some hours to go through.  However, since they are preserved I can work at them whenever there is a free moment.  For tomorrow morning, however, another experiment is planned.....

Late this afternoon, while the culture tubes were incubating, Emily and I went snorkeling to scout out coral colonies that she will be collecting tomorrow.  I took my camera along and thought I'd share some of today's pictures:

Here's a closeup of Pocillopora damicornis, the species of coral Emily is working on.  The width of this picture is about 4 inches.

Next to this coral colony was a colorful colonial anemone (also showing about 4 inches ):

Tropical fish can be spectacularly colorful, such as this box fish seen here:

Curious people constantly ask questions, trying to understand what they observe, and graduate students are no exception.  I spotted this not too far from the SeaFET.  It's a rack with pieces of coral wire-tied to it.  (Plastic wire ties have a gazillion uses!)  A CSUN graduate student that left last week is trying to determine how "plastic" the growth form is of this species of coral.  It can form finger-like projections on the upper parts of the colony, but has a more plate-like growth form around the lower edges.  She is transplanting pieces of colony to different locations on the colony to see if they grow in a manner appropriate for their new location, or retain their original growth form.

It will be interesting to see how these bits of coral grow....