Post written by Michael Studivan.

This week, PhD Candidate Michael Studivan and Lab Manager Patrick Gardner completed a CISME training workshop led by UNCW. Also known as the Coral In Situ MEtabolism platform, the CISME is a system developed by Drs. Alina Szmant and Robert Whitehead of UNCW and funded by NOAA's Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research, and Technology (CIOERT). CISME integrates pH, oxygen, and temperature sensors into a custom-built isolation chamber that allows in situ, non-destructive measurements of coral respiration and photosynthesis in a relatively short amount of time.

The workshop served as an opportunity for coral reef ecologists across the country to come together and test five of the CISME units on reef organisms and substrates. The workshop was hosted by RSMAS and involved participants from UNCW, RSMAS, HBOI-FAU, Scripps, FIU, Stanford, and NOAA.

To learn more about the CISME instrument, please check out their latest publication here. To see our photo album from the workshop, see our Flickr album.

Congratulations to Voss lab grad student Jennifer Polinski!  On Wednesday, May 11th, Jennifer presented and successfully defended her Master’s thesis research.  Her project, which was part of the CIOERT Mesophotic Coral Ecosystem project, focused on characterizing zooxanthellae assemblages in mesophotic M. cavernosa in the Gulf of Mexico. Jennifer used traditional techniques to determine cell density within coral tissues and chlorophyll content.  She found that the mesophotic corals sampled in the Gulf contained more zooxanthellae (but similar amounts of chlorophyll per zooxanthellae cell) in comparison to corals from neighboring shallow reefs, leading to higher overall chlorophyll content in the mesophotic corals. Additionally, next-generation sequencing of samples from the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary revealed similar zooxanthellae assemblage structure in shallow and mesophotic corals across three banks (East FGB, West FGB, and McGrail Bank).

Jennifer is presenting her research at the 13th International Coral Reef Symposium in Honolulu, HI, and a publication of these interesting findings is in the works.
 
Way to go Jennifer!

As part of our partnership with NOAA  through the Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research, and Technology based at FAU Harbor Branch, on May 3-7, 2016 our lab embarked on our 10th research cruise in the NW Gulf of Mexico aboard the RV Manta. In addition to field operations within the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary as part of our ongoing reciprocal transplant experiment (see Michael's new post), we also traveled to McGrail and Bright Banks with two major research objectives.  First, both McGrail and Bright Banks are being proposed for additional protection under the Sanctuary's Expansion Plan. Therefore, additional images, video, mapping, and data to characterize these sites can help to not only determine the extent of coral reef resources available, but also to support the proposed expansions plans. Second, we are interested in broadly assessing ecological connectivity at multiple spatial scales in order to understand the underlying biological processes that structure communities and to provide data that supports effective management strategies. The coral samples collected during our technical dives and previous ROV missions are being used to determine ecological connectivity using a suite of molecular techniques. Similarly, comparisons among these corals can provide information on the relative physiological status of corals over time from different banks and at different depths.  
 
Some of the incredible images from the cruise are available for viewing and downloads on our lab's Flickr page and a short video is also posted our Youtube page.  Thank you again to Jeff Beal from Florida FWC, Robbie Christian from RSMAS, Jake Emmert and Rachel Susen from the Moody Gardens Aquarium, the crew of the Manta, and all of our collaborators at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, Emma Hickerson, Ryan Eckert, John Embesi, G.P. Schmahl, Marissa Nuttall, Dustin Picard, and more. Many thanks also to the entire Voss lab team whose outstanding efforts made this cruise such a success. We look forward to returning on our next research cruise in July when we will continue our time series sampling and expand our exploration and characterization of these unique and amazing coral reef ecosystems. 
 
JDV

Post written by Michael Studivan.

Last week, members of the Voss lab completed another successful technical diving cruise at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. Joshua, Michael, Patrick, Jennifer, Danielle, and Amanda participated from the Voss Lab, and were joined by Jeff Beal of Florida FWC, Robbie Christian of RSMAS, and Jake Emmert and Rachel Susen from the Moody Gardens Aquarium.

The first few days of the cruise were spent at East and West Flower Garden Banks, completing three objectives: 1) to swap light and temperature data loggers at 70ft and 150ft, 2) to resample tagged colonies from the transplant experiment, and 3) to finish one-time sampling of shallow and mesophotic Montastraea cavernosa. The team used a combination of open circuit Trimix decompression and shallow dives to revisit the same sites originally located in October 2015. All the tagged and transplanted colonies appeared healthy and unbleached. 

In addition to the planned research objectives, the technical divers also observed and subsequently sampled a unique color morph of M. cavernosa, bright yellow with blue polyp mouths. The divers were once again visited and escorted between reef sites at West Bank by the same black grouper as in October. The lab will once again return to the Flower Garden Banks in July 2016 for another logger swap and more sampling of mesophotic coral banks in the NW Gulf.

Check out our lab Flickr for the photo album and our Youtube for a short video from the cruise!