Sabbatic research in Moorea... by Brian Rivest: Post #9

Today started out gray and wet (it is the rainy season here, after all), and the morning was spent conducting another trial run of the fertilization experiment. It's critical that I get the right sperm concentration in my culture tubes, and that is turning out to be tricky. The sperm concentration of my "Sperm Stock Solution" is determined by using a special slide called a hemacytometer on which I count the sperm found in a tiny volume. Inexplicably, for the last two days, the sperm counts in my stock solution have been significantly HIGHER at the end of the experiment than at the beginning! "Go figure!" I assume it has something to do with my technique so I am contemplating what I can do differently.

An after-lunch excursion was planned for collecting more COT among the "bommies" (small coral heads) at the northwest corner of the island. Such trips always fill me with anticipation, for one never knows what you might see when out in the field, and this afternoon's trip had several surprises. Vinnie was our boat driver. He's a technician from California State University at Northridge ("CSUN") here with a group of grad students and a post-doc. They all leave Tuesday and since he knows the tricky path through all the reefs to get to "COT city," I wanted him to show me how to navigate there one more time. However, along way he wanted to show us a couple of different spots, completely unrelated to COT. The first simply looked like an area of patch reefs, but in reality what looked like coral heads were actually sunken stone Tiki carvings. I am not sure how they ended up in the lagoon but one rumor is that the artist that carved them was so dissatisfied with the final products that he dumped them in the water. (Not an easy thing to do considering their size...) Regardless, it's a popular snorkeling spot for tourists and COT researchers alike:

Here are Emily and Viv, the post-doc from CSUN, not quite succeeding in mimicking the stone faces:

Although it was interesting to see underwater stone carvings, I was much more enthralled by our next stop, a spot where people frequently feed the sting rays so that they come flying in when they hear the anchor hitting the water. It was enchanting to have about eight of these beautiful animals cruising about so elegantly, so gracefully. . . looking for a handout no doubt!