From March 2-10, Michael Studivan and Amanda Alker will be returning to the Smithsonian field station on Carrie Bow Caye, Belize to complete work that was started in March 2014 (see those blog posts here). Their goals are to redeploy light and temperature data loggers at 60' and 130', resample tagged Montastraea cavernosa colonies at 60', and sample M. cavernosa colonies at 130'. These coral samples will be used to conduct a vertical population connectivity assessment and construct a temporal gene expression profiling analysis. Keep checking on our blog for Notes from the Field entries for Carrie Bow!

During an outing to collect estuarine discharge water for Alycia's third experimental trial, the lab flew the quadcopter over St. Lucie Reef to document the huge plume of discharge water leaving the inlet. The plume moved 1.5 miles south of the inlet by low tide, and covered the reef and lower lagoon with blackwater. This is one of  the worst discharge events we have seen since the start of the St. Lucie Reef monitoring project in 2010. See the embedded video above, or check it out on our Youtube page.