E5

10 June 2022 - Hawaii Fieldwork - Setup

by E5 1 min read

10 June 2022

Expedition Overview

The purpose of this field expedition is to conduct research during the spawning season for the coral Montipora capitata and the larval brooding season for Pocillopora acuta in Hawaii. Jill Ashey and Ariana Huffmyer (Putnam Lab, URI) and collaborators are conducting research at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology in June - July 2022. Projects include characterization of the role of microRNA in coral development see J. Ashey’s notebook here and the timing of symbiotic nutritional exchange see A. Huffmyer’s notebook here.

Tank and experimental setup

We made a lot of progress today setting up tank systems for this summer’s experiments.

  • Jill made more banjo screens for the squaricals.

  • Ariana assembled the cooler header systems that will be used to deliver heated and ambient seawater to the larval rearing containers.

  • Ariana assembled, cleaned, and ran all tank and squarical systems.

Tanks

Tanks

  • Ariana & Jill deployed Hobo temperature/light loggers into the four blue tanks and one header tank at 21:45 HST.

Connecting Apex equipment

We started and connected the Apex system to WiFi for temperature and pH control. This process required a lot of troubleshooting, and below are the steps that were successful.

  • Jill collected Apex materials for temperature treatments. Ariana & Jill turned the Apex on and connected it to wifi and the Apex Fusion app.
  • Plugged Apex brain into ethernet cable and went through set-up stages on phone with the Apex app
  • Confirmed Apex was showing up on Fusion and unplugged ethernet cable
  • On the computer, joined Apex set-up wifi
  • Opened Safari and went to apex.local
  • Selected the home wifi network (Gilligan for HIMB 2022) from the list that appeared
  • Entered the password for the home wifi network
  • Apex connected to wifi - a screen ran for ~10 minutes with the message “connecting to wifi”
  • On the computer, disconnected from apex wifi and rejoined home wifi network
  • Opened Apex fusion to check that the Apex was there and responsive (tested this by turning the outlets on/off using the fusion app)

This successfully connected the Apex system to WiFi. Tomorrow we will set up and program the Apex system to start temperature treatments.

Collecting corals

Tomorrow we will collect 15-20 adult Pocillopora acuta colonies to monitor for larval release.