Filtration setup for the disparate nutrient tubes.
I began this week by prepping my notebook with all the tables that I needed for measurements on Thursday and Friday. The beginning of the week was not busy as there was not much for me to do Monday and I had Tuesday and Wednesday off for Fourth of July celebrations! On Tuesday I helped my roommate Madeline with her masters project involving nutrition and filtration in relation to coral health. I spent two hours filtering water and adding nutrients to her tubes. As well as labelling them all according to what nutrients they have in them: Phosphorus, Nitrogen, Nitrogen+Phosphorus, control, stock, etc.
The only thing I did on Monday was help a new researcher, Christina, clean trays to make room for her new project at the coral farm. Christina’s project involves researching the pesky Phestilla sibogae. Festive is a non indigenous invasive species of sea slug, an aeolid nudibranch. It has and continues to smother Kaneohe Bay. It has bright orange spokes on the backside and it preys on corals photosynthetic zooxanthellae. Phestilla’s favorite coral to eat zooxanthellae off of is Porites and it causes a very short life span for the corals in this area. We decided to exclude Porites porites from our experiment because it is not worth it to continuously replace our numbs while they are trying to recover. We pulled all the infected Porites and placed them in a tank within the ToBo lab. Then we set up a time-lapse camera to record the progress of the Phestilla feasting.
Mary Anne, Myself, and Casey at Kailua beach.
Wednesday I went to Kailua with my roommates, Mary Anne and Casey, to watch a parade at 10:00. Then we went to the beach for hours before indulging on burritos and heading back to Coconut Island to watch the military airshow and fireworks! Thursday and Friday consisted of the weekly ritual of measuring all the coral nubs for our experiment. We have become so efficient however that it only took us 7 hours between the two days. During the rest of the day Friday, I took photos of the racks in the coral farms and attempted to create a 3D model. I will be taking more photos and videos next week to make them better and get different angles.
The 3D image we created.
Friday night we decided to go to Honolulu for First Friday which is an event in chinatown every first Friday of the month where all the local vendors, artists, and restaurants have sales and sell their items on the streets of Honolulu.
After reaching the waterfall!
Saturday I went on a four hour hike with Miranda and one of her friends. The hike was exciting because it was pouring rain and made the narrow trail extremely muddy. We all slipped once and got completely covered in mud. At the end there is a waterfall with two rope swings. I jumped off the waterfall a couple of times before heading back to Mirandas house for an amazing homemade meal and the viewing of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Sundaymy roommates and I went to Kailua beach again. We met up with friends and got açai bowls to finish the beautiful day.
Myself laying atop a life preserver attempting to take a level video of the trays.
Such a beautiful waterfall!
Miranda and I taking a break during taking measurements. She is holding one of our trays that holds nine corals for our single and multi-specie experiment.
Wow! Sounds like you had a great productive week despite having two days off! Glad you got to see some waterfalls. Good luck with the 3D imaging!
Alannah, you are doing such crazy good work!…Love hearing about your month long coral studies.
The cataloging has got to be tedious, but so well worth it. Also, it is such a awesome place and project/s.
I can only imagine how much fun you are enjoying what you are doing. That waterfall is incredible.
Glad you got some time off for holiday fun. Didn’t know you were so close to military base….I am sure
The fly show ( B Angels) was amazing…..just like you! Keep up the awesome job! 🙂
Connie & Garner Koons
Great write up Alannah, looks like a lot of fun.