Day 2 and 3 were dedicated to coral colony collection from the reef for spawning in buckets later this week. It´s a four person job: Masayuki is an expert in spotting mature coral colonies by snorkeling. Liz and I use Scuba and some serious hammering and chiseling to free individual colonies from the reef and Reina is always ready to collect and transfer our corals in buckets to the boat. After a few hours, together we got some beautiful Acropora digitifera at the south tip of Sesoko island and Acropora tenius in the north. Corals were brought back to shore and are now stored in our water table at Sesoko Marine Station. After the Hatta and Guse lab, the Ueno lab has now also arrived and our cosy wet lab space is almost ready for action. And by the way, after one day of sunshine we just hit the rainy season. Oh well – it´s still pretty gorgeous out here.
