Brian altered some of their collection nets.
Jason and Michael did some runs with the little freezer that Michael brought for us to try. Jason is entering some of the run data into his computer so they can see the rates that they were getting.
Michael and I were checking out the rates.
Mike shows us his altered collection net. All set for Mike's patented vortex method of collecting!
Michael with his freezer in action during a test run.
Mike and I geek out with our cameras. :)
Rafael does some test runs in his freezing box.
Possibly the most exciting part of the morning, Brian is using his aquarist skills and becoming my hero. I forgot to bring 5ml pipette tips for the trip, even though I brought and could really use a 5ml pipettor. Mary was able to get some long pipettes and I had Brian epoxy one to a syringe and now I can measure the amount of water I need for my fertilization vials. Woot!
A couple beach shots...
Looking back at the yellow house from the beach.
New critters for the day, hermit crabs at the edge of the beach. Very small and very cute!
Some underwater photography that Mike did this afternoon.
And the star of our show...
Michael and Jason ready for some snorkel-action this afternoon.
Had enough of a break in the afternoon I started putting together tracks for a new mix (surprise!). Notice the sunglasses with the headphones, rockstar style! ;)
Mary thinks the kitty might be brining us dead beetles as gifts as they are accumulating by the door.
Shortly before spawning time, our army of volunteers arrived. Sandra brought a ton of people tonight, which was great. They had everything covered for us and Iliana's group with two kayaks in the water to run potential samples from the divers to the shore, runners on the shore and back up folks all around. It was great having them here.
The volunteers listen as Mary explains what we need their help with.
Unfortunately, we got no spawning tonight. We'll cross our fingers for tomorrow. Everyone was dissapointed, but knew that this is how biology works, so we got out the drinks and some snacks and started to relax.
Then Brian got a call from Bob Snowden up at Iliana's house. Turns out one of their marked colonies spawned just a bit. Since it was just one colony, she couldn't use it as she needed to do fertilizations and they can't (or shouldn't...there's some evidence that it may happen, but offspring may not be viable) self-fertilize.
Mary ran up to their house and got the vial of eggs and sperm so that we could use the sperm to test some of our cryopreservation techniques. Here's Mary with her prize vial!
Mary gets the scope going so that we can see how dense the sperm is and how it looks, i.e. is it motile and intact?
Sperm looks really good at 2x10^8 (that's 200,000,000 sperm!) / ml.
Michael gets the freezer ready while Jason loads sperm into straws for some trials.
Rafael works on his faster freezing rate techniques.
Megan and Mary look at some thawed sperm and discuss its motility.
While it was dissapointing that the large group of volunteers didn't get to see a big spawn (some of them are able to return tomorrow) and unfortunate that we didn't get our full samples tonight, getting some sperm allowed us a nice opportunity to take some time to test some different cryopreservations. We were able to pin down specific cryoprotectants and rates that we want to try tomorrow night for actual fertilizations rather than having to do a ton of fertilizations that might not work. It was great that everyone got comfortable in the lab so we will be even more ready to go tomorrow night.
Good night for now!
Aloha!
No comments:
Post a Comment