We have spat!

"Spat!" Hanny exclaimed. I looked up from the microscope to see her hunched over a tub of water with a terra cotta tile inside. Her eyes were focused on a small point on the tile. She had found our first coral settler of the evening.

A coral spat (circled in pencil), photographed using a
microscope at 60x magnification

After recovering the tiles from each of our study sites, we set about examining them to find any juveniles that had settled during the deployment. The idea is that we can compare the genetic signatures of young juvenile corals to adults at the same site to see if the individuals settling there were spawned by parents at that site or elsewhere. Looking at the juveniles is a powerful way to understand the connectivity between different coral reefs.

Over the course of a few hours, we worked our way through the tiles from two of our sites. We were excited to see coral spat, but to be perfectly honest, there were fewer than we were hoping for. On average, we found just 3 - 5 juveniles per site. Every one felt like a victory, but we knew we would need more for a robust analysis.

As we searched the tiles, we brainstormed ideas for how to increase our numbers. We have a solid list of ideas to try out, and we'll integrate them into future projects. For now, we are grateful for the juveniles we did catch and look forward to further examining them back at WHOI. We'll identify them to species and see if we can use genetics to figure out where they came from.

I'm glad we at least got some coral spat!