New microscope camera for KML

Thanks to proceeds from the sale of KML t-shirts, hats, and Tervis tumblers, we now have a new microscope camera! Moticam X2 with wifi capabilities. Here are some photographs taken recently of our purple sea plume babies (Antillegoria bipinnata) - 39 days old

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 

Elkhorn Coral Spawning at Turtle Rocks

Spawning! Gamete bundles rise from an Elkhorn Coral colony - 10:50pm 3 nites after full moon (photo K Neeley)

 KML staff divers had the opportunity to assist FWC/FWRI coral biologists with the Acropora spawning project at Turtle Rocks (Upper Keys). Scientists from 7 agencies combined forces to monitor various sites in the Upper Keys to witness the annual event and collect samples.

Divers head to the reef to monitor for spawning

Diver Bill Ferrell rigging a marker buoy at sunset

Elkhorn Coral colonies (Acopora palmata)

Staghorn Coral (Acropora cervicornis) provides a sheltered bed for a juvenile parrotfish (photo C Lewis)

Moonjellies dancing in the moon beams

Scientists measure oxygen consumption in coral sands

Diver checking on "tripod" of eddy correlation instruments at their monitoring site 

 Dr. Markus Huettel, from Florida State University, returned to KML in August 2013 with his colleague, Dr. Peter Berg from the University of Virginia and a team of divers to once again carefully deploy an array of equipment on the ocean floor. They are investigating the role of light, currents and dissolved organic matter on oxygen consumption of coral sands and carbonate mud. (permit: FKNMS-2012-137)

Despite several days of rough seas, the team returned to their site each day over a 10-day period to download data and re-deploy equipment.

Shark research continues at KML

Capturing Bonnethead and juvenile Lemon and Nurse sharks temporarily held in the KML Mesocosym for transport

Christine Bedore, Duke University (Durham, NC), used KML as home port while collecting lemon sharks for her PhD research. She is studying "Shark predation on cryptic prey" & "Oxygen demands of sharks during swimming". Assisted by Jack Morris and her colleagues from Mote Marine Lab, they captured juvenile sharks and held them in the KML's 120,000-gal Mesocosym for later transport.

Adaptation to loacal environment in corals?

Are corals genetically adapted to different habitats, or are they able to change their physiology to match novel environmental conditions? Carly Kenkel, a PhD candidate from the University of Texas at Austin hopes to answer this question for her model coral species, the Mustard Hill Coral (Porites astreoides), in the Florida Keys. She came to KML to set-up a large reciprocal transplant experiment to test for local adaptation of P. astreoides to differing thermal environments in the Keys. Because she was only able to spend 5 days here, the KML staff scientists helped with her collections and field deployment of the experiment. KML divers collected 15 P. astreoides colonies from a near-shore and off-shore site.

Healthy P. asteroides colony next to color reference card

Carly then fragmented these colonies using a tile saw, and mounted them on cement pucks with cattle tag labels to keep track of all the individuals.

Finally, Carly weighed all the fragments so that she can monitor growth during her experiment.

KML divers returned all the mounted fragments to her field sites, and she’ll be back in the spring and again in the fall to see if her predictions are correct!