Samples collection - Kenting

Last two days, I and Xue-Ping (research assistant at Academia Sinica) was out in Kenting, South Taiwan to collect my coral samples. I stayed in the new hostel at NMMBA (National Marine of Marine Biology and Aquarium). The place is very new and spacious! There are two levels, and each level has 8 double occupancy rooms. My room had two double beds, a nice flat-screen tv and a nice closet. Unfortunately, the internet here is VERY SLOW... well, you can't win all! :).. I guess the place is really for tourist because I rarely turn on the tv at all. Most of the time, I am either out in the lab preparing my tanks, or in the water collecting my samples.

Room

The new hostel

The purpose of this trip is to collect coral samples to acclimate for the next 2 weeks in the NMMBA tanks. Meanwhile, I would be back to Academia Sinica,Taipei to do some bench work. Besides collecting samples, I also scouted out 3 colonies outside the Nuclear Plant region for my field in-situ testing experiment. There will also be 3 other coral colonies, which I had already confirmed within the Nuclear Plant Inlet site. Therefore, I will be performing in-situ field testing on a total of 6 coral colonies at 2 different sites, which have different water flow characteristics and temperature differences. Wei-Jie, an experienced dive guide helped us with the coral samples collection and ID of the colonies. He is very experienced with helping scientific research, and he knows the area very well, making him a very important part of the experiment!

Acropora muricata colony 1

Acropora muricata colony 2

Acropora muricata colony 3

Wei-Jie busy collecting samples... I just need to stay out of his way

The plan was to be at NMMBA for 2 days for this trip. One day for samples collection and one day to prepare all the tanks ready for the experiment. I reckon there should be some fine tuning when we are back in December for the experiment. However, getting most of the tanks ready now means lesser work in December.

Tanks are ready

Coral nubbins are acclimating

Now... back to Taipei to do some more DNA extraction, and get ready to send the samples out for sequencing!...YAY! :)