Purple sea plume spawning at KML

Day 1:  New coral planulae emerge on the mother sea plume colony (November 23, 2016)

Dr. Mary Alice Coffroth (SUNY Buffalo) and her team from the BURR Lab (Buffalo Undersea Reef Research) captured the purple sea plume (Antillegorgia bipinnata) spawning event at KML. These corals spawned 1 week before the November new in  moon KML's new seawater well system.

Day 10: Planulae settling on tiles, mouth parts developing (photo by DJ Valent)

Day 15: New recruits! Planulae metamorphosed and settled on pre-conditioned ceramic tiles, polyp tentacles beginning to develop. Baby corals were inoculated with photosynthetic algae (Symbiodinium) harvested from the mother colony.

Day 21: Tentacles extended. These are octocorals (soft coral) so they have 8 tentacles on each polyp which capture small particles (zooplankton) from the water. Purple calcareous spicules (sclerites) are beginning to form in the base of the polyp, protecting the baby coral from predation.

Day 21: Brownish tinge in tentacles 6 days after inoculation, is evidence of the uptake of Symbiodinium which photosynthetically provides nutrients to the growing coral.

Day 23: More purple sclerites and brown algal symbionts visible

Day 31