The spawning paper

Man, it's hard to believe a few weeks have already gone by. As the adage goes, time flies when you're having fun. In this case, it seems I lost track of time while...well, having fun. 

My favorite part of my job is writing. In fact, I wish I had known back in college how much of my time I would spend writing as a scientist. It is so indescribably satisfying to take a set of data, condense it down into a few clear patterns, and then fill pages with words to tell the world what you've found. 

Newly settled Porites lobata corals.

The past few weeks, I've been writing about a coral. You know it well - Porites lobata, the species my team has worked on in Palau since 2018. Over the past two years, we figured out when P. lobata spawns, got colonies to spawn in the lab in Palau, reared the larvae, and even settled them on tiles. Along the way, we made really important observations - what cues make the adults spawn, what size the eggs are, how quickly the larvae develop, what settlement cues the larvae respond to best. It's been an incredible amount of work. 

And now it's time to tell the world. Our data will be valuable not just for other researchers, but for non-profits doing coral restoration as well. For years, coral research has heavily emphasized branching species in the genus Acropora. Sure, Acropora corals are sensitive to bleaching, but restoration of just one genus does not make a healthy reef. There have been calls for scientists to investigate reproduction in a broad range of coral species. By understanding reproduction and larval development in more than just Acropora, we can lay the foundation for restoration of diverse, thriving coral reefs.  

In my mind, Porites is one of the most important coral genera to understand, because Porites corals are so resilient in the face of bleaching. Porites to me represents the future of coral reefs. 

Hopefully, our data will help push both science and coral restoration in the right direction. I'm waiting on final comments from a few co-authors, and then I should be able to submit the paper!