15 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.

Larval collection

There was more larval output today. It appears larval release may be ramping up. Larval release is still low, but increasing. We will use the larvae for practicing larval protocols tomorrow.

Field work

Today we went to Reef 13 in Kaneohe Bay to collect live fragments from Montipora capitata bleaching pairs to ship to URI later next week. We were successful in finding most pairs that we were interested in. We did not sample from colonies with low biomass left. We enjoyed a nice snorkel on Reef 13!

Respiration protocols

We walked through the protocols to run respirometry measurements with larvae. We are writing detailed protocols to follow for the rest of the trip.

Temperature treatments

The Apex was stable today and had good separation between treatments.