Time flies

Its amazing how fast a summer can fly.

A summer gone and what is to show for it? Three poster presentations full of excellent science.

Floating styrofoam balls

Tiny pinkish bundles of sperm and egg aggregate on the surface of the ocean in cycles with the moon. Fish start a feeding frenzy. Marine biologists start a different frenzy - they don their headlights, lie on their bellies to look over the dock, or hop into a kayak with a scoop. 

I temporarily traded in my sea urchins to try my hand at manipulating corals. Its a lot harder to work with corals that only spawn when they want to and where they want to. So this adventure took me to Hawaii in this summer.

Injected embryo (FITC, green) next to uninjected embryos. The symbiotic algae are autofluorescent (red)

The corals were definitely a challenge. But miracles happened, and we developed techniques to inject them and even got some to settle.  Yeah.  

Next year will be even better.