Greeting from the sunny Florida Keys! I am working on my masters project at the Keys Marine Laboratory on Long Key, FL. I'm here from May 24th until July 12th working with the upside-down jellyfish Cassiopea xamachana. The plan is to collect larvae from adult jellyfish then to settle them on mangrove leaves in the lab and give them specific Symbiodinium algae cultures and see how their fitness differs between treatments. Then! I plan on putting them out at three sites here in the keys and see if they change what symbiont types they have.
That is the very brief an outline of my Masters thesis project in a nutshell haha
So, upon arriving here at KML me, my advisor Mac, and Anke our Post-doc have been very busy....between snorkeling around trying to find cassiopea, to collecting larvae from spawning Briarium corals, there is never a dull moment! After a long hot day at Craig Key collecting larvae (and of course snorkeling around and exploring the hard-bottom site!), and bringing them back to the lab where we stayed up until past midnight cleaning, sorting and transferring the larvae into fresh filtered sea water, we have had successful settling of Briarium polyps on old gorgonian branches!! It is quite an exciting feat to see them settle almost immediately after placing the branches in their buckets! Now, I can only hope the Cassiopea larvae settle the same....keep those fingers crossed!!!!
May 24th: Anke, Cindy and I went out at 6:30am to scan the beach looking for loggerhead turtle crawls and nests. It was a beautiful morning, we saw no new crawls, but checked out the nesting sites from a few days ago.
No luck finding any cassiopea in Grassy Key Quarry today. :/ They've seemed to have disappeared from KML....! of course as soon as I want to study them.... those tricky little jellyfish!
May 25th: We went out to Craig Key, (Ann's study site for Porites divaracata! we saw all her old samples there too.) to check out Briarium spawning...we're in luck! by the end of the day, we had buckets and buckets full of the pretty little orange larvae!
Mac and Anke collecting Briarium larvae We got to snorkel around the site all afternoon too, which was great--
Craig key is a hardbottom site and only max 6ft deep, so there was lots to see!
This is Oreaster reticulatus the cushion sea star
Cindy and I found Cyphoma gibbosum the Flamingo Tongue 
This was quite the find, too! Its a Olgocephalus nastus, Shortnose batfish! We chased him around for a bit...he kind of swims and waddles. It was a funny site to see.
A pretty sunset at Bill's home
Successful Briarium settlement!
I'll keep you posted on the HOPEFUL success of my cassiopea settling...and also post a good picture of a mature cassiopea medusa because I just realized I haven't put one up yet. Ok, thats it for now!!
