Meyer-Kaiser lab

My last night in Palau, Cas insisted we go to Bem Ermii. It's the food truck across the bridge in Airai that serves burgers, fries, and milkshakes. He needed a strawberry milkshake , he said, to make sure we got more spawning. After working in the ocean for the last 12 years and monitoring coral spawning over the last month, I have to admit that I understand why sailors are stereotypically so superstitious. Events seem so random sometimes, you try everything you can to gain control. Strawberry milkshake it was.  Maikani "Selfie Queen" Andres got all four of us and the  sunset in a single image. We ate our dinner on the dock and watched the sunset - that was Maikani's idea. It was beautiful. Not just the sunset, but sitting on a boat trailer with my team, passing around the squeeze bottle of mayonnaise, eating in relative silence, just enjoying each other's company and the natural world around us. I needed that time to zoom out and appreciate the moment.  It feels

Eggs being released from Porites lobata .  Photo by Maikani Andres. I had just gotten into the water when I heard Maikani's faint voice. She was exclaiming about something. Matt heard her better than I did. "They're spawning?" he shouted back to confirm.  I didn't really hear the answer, but the fact that Matt took off running was a good sign. I climbed out of the water, doing my best not to scrape my legs on the sharp oyster shells, and followed them both over to the tank room.  Yep, we got spawning! Two individuals gave us their gametes - one male, one female. From the lineage we needed the most, from the site we needed the most. It was what we had been waiting and wishing for. Cas said we manifested the spawning by putting our desires out into the universe. Maikani insisted the corals spawned because she had played them a Marvin Gaye song earlier in the night. Matt wanted to know which song it was, because apparently a species he's worked on in the Caribbea

One of our coral parents sitting in its tank during the nightly spawn watch. This photo was taken using a blue light and a  yellow filter, so you can see the red and green fluorescence. Friends, it is that time again: the week after the full moon. It is coral spawning time.  This is our second full moon in Palau. Last month, a few individuals of our study species spawned, and we got enough  larvae  for one experiment . We didn't have enough individuals for our full transplant experiment, so this month, we're hoping for more.  We collected all our parent corals from our study sites and set them up in seawater tanks at PICRC. Every evening, we isolate them in small tanks to keep the eggs and sperm separate if they do spawn, then check them every half hour between 7 and 11 pm. We call this part of the day Spawn Watch. It usually involves Cas, Matt, and me sitting in the wet lab for four hours, quietly working on our own computers. One of us gets up at the top and bottom of the hou

Phestilla lugubris . Photo by Matthew-James Bennett. We were leaning over the tank together. Matthew illuminated the coral nubbins with a red filter on his phone's flashlight.  "Do you know what this is?" he asked.  My first guess was a polynoid polychaete - a scale worm. If not that, probably a mollusk of some kind, maybe a nudibranch. Whatever it was, it was surprisingly large, and it was definitely eating our corals.  "How do we get it off?" Matthew queried.  I shrugged. "Scrape it off with a scalpel," I offered, digging in the back of my mind to remember if I had packed forceps. "Make sure you get underneath it, because otherwise, it might break."  Matthew wanted to keep the animal alive, so he ended up using a zip tie as a very gentle tool to pry it away from the coral nubbin. Once we had it in a petri dish, we stuck it under the microscope. It had a muscular foot, so it had to be a mollusk. Its shape and number of dorsal tentacles sugg

The team on the dive boat Every trip to Palau must include at least one day for fun diving - it's basically the law. Our team had one more day off this week before things get busy, so we reserved spots on a dive charter headed out to Palau's barrier reef. It was a great chance for all of us to enjoy being in the water together.  Diving on Palau's barrier reef is actually pretty challenging because the currents are incredibly strong. Most dives are drift dives, which means you drift with the current and then the boat picks you up wherever you end.  Our first dive site had an incredibly strong current. We drifted along a vertical wall covered in corals and then rode the current to the top, where we anchored. That's right - we anchored ourselves into the reef. There are these things called "reef hooks" that are metal hooks attached to long fabric lines that clip to your dive gear. You find a dead coral on the reef (never hook into live coral), place your hook aro

"Don't go chasing waterfalls, just stick to the rivers and the lakes like you used to" - "Chasing waterfalls" by TLC We blasted that song in the car. Maikani had it on her phone, and we managed to stream her music through the rental car's speakers. A part of my mind flashed back to the early 90s - suddenly, I was 7 years old again and listening to the radio with my sister. Maikani at Ngatpang Waterfall. Photo by Matt Bennett. We had a day off today - one of the few this trip. I offered the team a few options for fun activities, and the clear winner was chasing waterfalls.  There are a number of waterfalls on Palau's northernmost island, Babeldaob. I found one with Kharis last November , and we had an amazing hike. This time, I wore a swimsuit under my clothing so I could not just hike but swim in the river below the waterfall. Others followed suit.  We actually ended up going to two different waterfalls on the western side of Babeldaob. We hiked down the

"In the early part of the 20 th century, the United States and Japan engaged in a federally-funded, large-scale joint effort to create artificial habitats across much of the tropical Pacific Ocean. This ecological experiment is most commonly referred to as World War II." I once started a proposal with those words. My maritime archaeologist collaborator vetoed it.  Corals on the port side hull of one of our wrecks Here's the thing, though: WWII shipwrecks do constitute a massive ecological experiment.  By the end of 1945, the U.S. and Japan had each sunk thousands of ships and airplanes on the seafloor. They're all primarily composed of metal, vary in size and structure, and were sunk within a few years of each other. Most are located in shallow lagoons or nearshore habitats surrounded by coral reefs. They actually serve as the ideal natural experiment for studying biodiversity on anthropogenic habitats. I love shipwrecks . You know this, friends. So when my research

I watched the screen of the GPS eagerly as we drew closer. 100 m, then 50 m. I scanned the coast around me - it looked familiar. 40 m, then 30 m. The bow of the boat bounced in the waves, and I did my best to brace against the motion. 20 m. I asked Matthew to prepare the anchor. 10 m. 9 m. 8 m. We were within the resolution of the GPS for a moving boat, so I gave the order to cut the engines and drop the anchor. We were here.  "Here" is a rather random spot on the eastern side of Palau. It feels just like the middle of nowhere - you're not in the bay or on the barrier reef. The water transitions from calm coastal water to wave-driven offshore water, but you're not really in either water mass. It's just this random spot where the seafloor gets a little shallower. We come here because a previous research team from WHOI sampled here in 2015.  A baby coral at Airai (person's fingers for scale) I wanted to use the site, Airai, for our transplant experiment, but whe

Tama Every time we go out on the boat, MJ and Maikani, the two team members who live locally, bring with them Palauan snack foods to share. There's a culture in Palau of swinging by a convenience store in the morning to buy the pre-made food that will constitute your lunch for the day. I've even heard MJ ask Maikani "Where did you get your bento today?"  So in the spirit of local cultural flavor (literally!), I'd like to introduce you to a few Palauan snack foods. Matt, Cas, and I having abrabang on the boat Tama are small spheres of fried bread - basically savory donut holes. You eat them in the morning, and they're apparently great to dip in coffee. I've had plain and banana versions. The banana tama was like deep-fried banana bread!  Abrabang are also donut-like, but savory. They're disc-shaped, fried, and filled with a reddish bean paste. The flavor reminded me of raspberry jam, if raspberries were naturally low in sugar. Abrabang are extremely f

My favorite pictures from plankton samples I've collected in Palau this trip. Enjoy! A nectochaete - grows up to be a segmented worm I think this must be a sponge larva Sponge larva I think this might be a young Muller's larva, but I'm not entirely sure. A mix of snail and clam larvae from one site, Outer Taoch  

A giant clam  Close-up of our study species, Porites lobata . Photo by Cas Grupstra. Nudibranch! Photo by Matt Bennett. Close-up shot of the tentacles in a Fungia coral There were a lot of zoanthids (colonial anemones) at our site Ngerur. I think these are Zoanthus sociatus. A macro shot of the coral Merulina ampliata

Close-up shot of a coral. Photo by Cas Grupstra.   Nudibranch! Photo by Matt Bennett Tunicates! Photo by Matt Bennett Nudibranch! Photo by Matt Bennett. A young Pocillopora coral A little fish in his cave

My favorite photos from our site Ngelsibel. Little baby coral! A pipefish Little baby Fungia corals Close-up shot of a crown-of-thorns seastar, Acanthaster planci A baby version of our study species, Porites lobata We saw a sea snake at the end of the dive!

A lot of the data I collect in Palau are images of corals. The photos have a legitimate scientific purpose  (describing community composition at each site), but they are also stunningly beautiful. Here are a few of my favorites from our site Mecherchar. A community of corals A coral recruit A brain coral recruit A faviid coral recruit Montastrea sp.? Photo by Carsten Grupstra. A coral recruit, Favites pentagona Two recruits: a fungiid and a faviid  

Last fall, I had an idea . I was spending so much time and energy trying to imitate the substrata that corals settle on, maybe I should just give up and sample them where they're at. Corals settle on dead corals. If you look hard enough on any reef, you're bound to find some tiny baby corals living on the limestone. So I should just sample them there, right?  One of the coral recruits at Mecherchar This trip, I'm acting on my idea by photographing coral recruits on the reef. My hope is that the photos will give me a broader idea of what species were settling at each of my study sites - more than the pathetic number of individuals I can catch on tiles. I packed the macro lens for my underwater camera, grabbed my secret weapon, loaded my dive gear on the boat, and headed out.  Oh, what is my secret weapon, you ask? That would be a man by the name of  Matthew-James Bennett . He joined our team this trip to help with coral spawning, but his skills do not stop there. Matt can s