Last but definitely not least, I was fortunate enough to see the Mountainous Star Coral, Montastraea faveolata, release its gametes into the night – but not without a few bumps in the road.
Earlier in the day, I was scheduled to go out to the dive site on a large sailboat with Laurie MacLaughlin from the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. When I arrived at our meeting spot, some local divers and friends of Laurie’s were already getting ready to push off. Everything seemed to be taken care of: there were coolers full of food and beverages, tanks were stabilized on board, and the captain had just arrived. We would all surely have plenty of time to become familiar with the dive site before dark, until the engine started to malfunction.
Even so, it was a beautiful evening so nothing could dampen our spirits. After not much more than an hour delay, we set sail for the Horseshoe dive site. Laurie, being the great hostess that she is, gave us a fun and informative presentation on Montastraea spawning while serving her famous stromboli. This was exceedingly helpful for those, like myself, who had never witnessed this reproductive event before.
I began to feel much more at ease as we drew closer to our anchorage point. This was the first time that I was in charge of bringing back the correct concentration of gamete bundles in sea water. Eager to do my best, I hurriedly assembled my gear and hopped off the boat with Laurie.
The instant I was on the surface, I became very much aware of the strong current that night. Without any light from the sun left, we descended in the hopes of being able to orient ourselves quickly before any corals spawned. With a large gear bag of buoyant spawning nets in my arms, I was finding it very difficult to stay down in the shallow, surge-filled waters. More often than not I found myself completely vertical and face down, kicking with all my might against the current.
Laurie immediately started zooming around with her transect tape to ensure that we knew how to get back to the boat. For a while, it was all I could do to follow her. At one point she took her regulator out of her mouth and tried to say something to me. Naturally, I understood nothing and all the difficulties of underwater communication soon made themselves apparent. We swam from coral colony to coral colony as she gave me instructions and I attempted to understand her, until she started moving her light beam rapidly over a coral.
Well I received that message loud and clear! I swam to her side and illuminated the colony as a couple gamete bundles drifted off of it. Then, just as Laurie threw the net over it, the coral released its remaining bundles all at once. I took a small moment to appreciate what had just happened before we were off again in search of more. It wasn’t long before we had netted a Brain Coral and were collecting the two jars of gametes to bring back to the boat.
Now it was time for me to put my pipetting skills to good use. I had expected to be preparing tubes of coral gametes on the floor of a severely rocking boat, so sitting at a table on a large sailboat was pretty luxurious. Laurie had dove back in to net more corals, and by the time she brought up all the equipment, we had spawn from six different colonies! I finished preparing the isolated tubes, and then everyone on the boat participated in the preparation of the “slop” bucket, which contained a little spawn from each coral colony all mixed together. The goal with the slop was to see if we could get some fertilization action going.
All in all, it was a successful night. We got the spawn we came for, and everyone had a great time diving.
– Andie