Things are certainly moving right along with the Primnoa pacifica samples from Septembers cruise. In total we tagged 40 colonies, collected water samples for carbonate chemistry and set out environmental sensors to collect temperature and salinity data year around - quite the feat for just 4 days on site! Though most of the samples will be sent to Maine to await my arrival there, I did bring some back here to Hawaii to analyze and get a sense of what is going on in the fjords!
These corals are proving to be pretty interesting! The primary goal of this first set of samples is to find out which ones are males and females for sure, to make sure we samples the right ones when Bob and Jennifer go back in December. So far they've proved to be tricky - some of the ones we thought were males are actually females and vice versa! Luckily there is nothing like a good scientific puzzle!
These corals are proving to be pretty interesting! The primary goal of this first set of samples is to find out which ones are males and females for sure, to make sure we samples the right ones when Bob and Jennifer go back in December. So far they've proved to be tricky - some of the ones we thought were males are actually females and vice versa! Luckily there is nothing like a good scientific puzzle!
Image above - Top left - SEM image of the tip of a branch - those are three polyps all facing us, much more heavily armored than I was expecting, see all those plates! Top right - a large and small polyp (a) and an area on the outside of the coral where they seem to keep their larvae (bottom left picture). And bottom right - lots and lots of eggs in a female coral!
Aloha Dr. W.
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