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.
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| 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.
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