In the quiet of the night

Back when I was in college, I used to volunteer at this homeless shelter run by my church. I always signed up for the 2-6 am shift, partly because they always needed people for it, but also partly because I loved the quiet that descends in the middle of the night. Most of the guests were asleep, so I sat at one of the dining room tables and talked with the other volunteers, or, more frequently, that one insomniac guest. I always brought homework, but I never did it. When 6:00 rolled around and my replacement arrived, I would drive out to a park right outside of town and watch the sun rise over Lake Superior. As the sky grew lighter, the quiet hush was broken, and the day rolled forth.
 
I thought about the homeless shelter today for the first time in years, because I was once again awake in the quiet of the night. I left my house at 2:45 am in an airport shuttle. I thought I would sleep; I was prepared to work; but instead, I just talked.
 
I am on the way to Palau with the new postdoc on our project, named Cas. It’s actually hard for me to believe we made it to this point. For starters, how in the world is it already mid-April? Second, it feels like I just returned from Palau last week, but that recon mission is already 6 months behind me. Craziness.
 
This trip is the big one. We are setting up an experiment that will form the crux of my coral research in Palau for the next year. It is also the major focus of Cas’ postdoctoral position. Everything hinges on this trip, which puts pressure on me as a leader. We are attempting to spawn the coral Porites lobata, raise the larvae to settlement in captivity, and then outplant the young coral recruits at their home reef or a different reef to see if they survive.
 
I’ve dealt with spawning and done experiments with live larvae plenty of times throughout my career. What’s so nerve-wracking about this trip is that corals are, quite frankly, selfish, controlling jerks. They spawn in the middle of the night, so you have to adjust your circadian rhythm to theirs. There’s extensive research on coral spawning that shows most species reproduce around the full moon – except that sometimes, they just don’t feel like it and spawn a few days earlier or later. There’s absolutely no way to induce spawning in corals, so you are at their mercy, and if you miss the spawn, you’re done. The larvae have high mortality in laboratory cultures and are notoriously picky about where they settle. Basically, the corals are in charge. We’re on their schedule.
 
The good news is that we have prepared for this trip in every way we could. We know from two previous research papers that P. lobata spawns 6 days after the full moon in April and May. Based on data from last fall, we know which genetic lineage each eligible parent belongs to, so we can avoid crossing lineages and compounding our experimental design. I shipped the tiles we’ll use for settlement to Palau several weeks ago, so they should be pre-conditioned with a bacterial biofilm by the time we arrive. The only question mark left is the spawning.
 
I’m very excited for this trip, no matter how it goes. As with all things, I have back-up plans to my back-up plans. We will definitely come home with data!