Strawberry milkshake

We arrived back at the station with our dinner - burgers, fries, and strawberry milkshakes purchased from a food truck across the bridge. After a long day - our first day! - of collecting coral colonies from four study sites, we were ready for dinner and a rest. We should just check the corals quickly, we thought, to make sure they're not going to spawn tonight. 

These, ladies and gentlemen, are fertilized embryos of the
gonochoric, broadcast-spawning coral Porites lobata.

"Um, guys, is this sperm?" Cas asked while peering into one of the bins.

Matthew rushed over with a flashlight. "Yes." 

Cas and I cursed at the exact same time. His facial expression was not one of a professional researcher about to conduct the first-ever ex situ fertilization and larval culturing of the coral Porites lobata. It was the look of a man who had just bought himself a strawberry milkshake and would have to let it melt while he worked. 

Spawning came early this month. Back when I planned this trip, I made sure we arrived in time for peak Porites spawning, which according to two different papers happens 6-7 days after the full moon in April and May. But here we were on day 4 after the full moon, and a few individuals were already going. It was quite the surprise. 

We spent the next several hours siphoning sperm with turkey basters, checking the corals every 10 minutes for small pink eggs, carefully mixing gametes from different parents, and taking copious notes. It was a fun but busy night, and I cannot tell you how many times I walked between the seawater tanks and the wet lab. 

When we wrapped up about 2 am, we had a number of accomplishments to be proud of. I noticed a list of them in Matthew's handwriting on the lab bench and could not resist a photo. We successfully spawned and fertilized Porites lobata, saved sperm for genomic sequencing, and tested for compatibility between different genetic lineages. That is way better than a strawberry milkshake.