Finally, the corals are gettin' busy!

Well, the past few days have been exhausting, but so very exciting!! The Montipora verrucosa colonies that we have collected have been spawning like crazy around 8:20 pm since Wednesday night! Apparently this is the first time that the spawning of this species has ever been documented here!

Pocillopora damicornis larval traps

 The whole ordeal is definitely a two person job, and can get a bit stressful... As you can see in the short video, individual polyps on the colonies release sperm/egg bundles that float to the surface. We collect them using extremely sophisticated turkey basters, the idea being to sample them before the egg bundles break apart, causing the eggs and sperm to disperse. After sampling egg bundles from each colony that spawns, we mix all of the egg bundles together to allow them to fertilize each other, crossing our fingers that there will be happy, fertilized eggs in the morning! So far, fertilization hasn't been so great, but we have gotten some larvae, which is still a success.

Nets placed over Pocillopora
damicornis colonies to catch
larvae release overnight.

Another species, Pocillopora damicornis has also been spawning for the past few nights, but (thankfully for us), they are brooders, which means that they release fully developed larvae. So, we don't have to do the whole fertilization bit ourselves, and can just leave larval traps and nets out overnight. The larvae are then waiting for us to sample in the morning. It's a busy job, with many hours spent in the lab culturing, sampling, rinsing off fixative, and filtering water. And I am loving every single minute!