Have sweatshirt will travel

So what does one need to pack for a 5-week scientific trip, 4 of which are on a sail boat? Clearly I couldn’t bring everything I would have liked. Also much of the dive gear I would need is provided (regulator and BC) as are the materials for sampling and storing the coral samples were to collect. But still, in packing for Tara, I was highly concerned about space, so I devised a plan under the assumption that I would have no access to civilization for 4 weeks… oh wait that’s true. So here is a list of my gear and comments on many of them. Noticeably lacking is a rain jacket (face palm), but thus far I think I this was a good standard list and would have been even appropriate for a longer trip.

becky and chris moaiElectronics

Can’t really travel these days without a ridiculous assortment of things that can get fried in seawater and are really expensive. I tried to limit mine to just a few but it kept adding up so in the end it’s just 10 things. Had this been my husband’s blog it would be considerably more, so I am feeling smug.

  1. Laptop with charger. Ahh my lemon Mac lap. Clearly I had to bring it but this POS has windows office crash relatively commonly and its key board loves to stop working for no reason…see spare mouse. Had to buy this POS last year when we were in Curacao and mine was stolen by some a****** who broke into our house and took all the electronics and my wallet from the main room.
  2. Hard drive for backing up all my stuff from Tara and that includes all my stuff from my desktop back home sans my Next Gen Sequencing libraries. So I can work and complete all those papers and revisions that are outstanding….yeah time to work on papers!
  3. iPad for reading in bed mostly, with many recently-acquired YA books about various kinds of magicians and mythical creatures! Downside…doesn’t help with finishing those manuscripts.
  4. iPhone which apparently now is just an expensive paper weight in my gear cause I have no service. Will be important again when I return to the US I guess.
  5. Two USA-to-Euro converters ’cause why pack one when two are better?
  6. Noise cancelling headphones with extra batteries and cords for engine noise and French lessons. C’est bon!
  7. Dive watch with the necessary instructional manual because last time I dove in Hawaii all it said was “wet” the whole time and didn’t record a single dive. To the company who made that computer…really?…really really?.. why is that even a setting?  
  8. Headlamp for walking around at night. Shit’s dark in the middle of nowhere.
  9. Spare mouse for crappy laptop (see number 1).
  10. Digital camera. An oldie but a goodie. Ended up donating my flash card to the Tara underwater cameras so currently is useless. Hello iPhone.

welcome to easter island

Luggage and Gear

Like any good expedition, this trip was a great excuse to buy even more kit and gear to take up space and collect dust in my garage and lab for 11 months of the year. For example, item #one was an item I have wanted for many years, but had no reason to plop down the $140 (actually $98 thank you end-of-the-summer sale) in cash for. But hey…I’m on a boat so any gear needs to be water proof and relatively small right?, so cha-ching!  

  1. One super hot and stylish 45 liter ‘Bottomless Pit’ duffle bag from Patagonia (cue hand wringing). Fully water proof! Shoulder backpack straps for easy carrying through airports! Sea blue and oh so shiny! Got a crap ton of stuff in it, including my full size fins, people. Its name ran true as it did seem bottomless.
  2. Timbuktu personally designed laptop case. Had one of these given to me in 2005 by my father in law. It never died and was still is in amazing shape after spending some time at the bottom of the sea (whoops) and in a cooler filled with fish (double whoops). So this last year I got a new one that I designed myself. Note to future buyers, go with the Velcro covers…my clothes and my couch are destroyed.  
  3. Mask, fins, booties, and gardening gloves for diving. While most the gear is provided, I’m just not comfortable diving without these very personal items. I like to know that I won’t have a leaky and foggy mask or weak-ass fins that are gonna give me leg cramps or worse fall off in any current.
  4. 3mm Scuba Pro wetsuit. Had to get a new one after 7 years of wearing the other one and constantly complaining that I needed a new one cause mine was jacked from hundreds of hours underwater. Now I can’t complain about it, right Ryan and Deron?
  5. Two pairs sunnies (sunglasses, mate), croakies (to keep said glasses on neck or afloat), and a case to store them in the event I throw something on them or have my bag unceremoniously thrown on the boat.
  6. 1 pair eye glasses that if they break I’m screwed.
  7. Mechanical pencils and sharpies (required science gear).
  8. Blue nitrile gloves (see above parenthetical statement).
  9. Hair brush and many hair ties to lose in the ocean (ladies and dudes with man buns you know what I am talking about).
  10. As Zapphoid recommends, 1 towel to dry oneself and double as a blanket and other things (see Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).
Eating dinner with the crew

Eating dinner with the crew

Toiletries

  1. Sunscreen for keeping the cancer at bay.
  2. Hippie biodegradable toothpaste for keeping the bad breath and cavities at bay…tastes horrible.
  3. Face lotion, which I probably won’t use till Moorea.
  4. Lip balm.
  5. A thousand kinds of decongestant and anti-diarrhea meds cause well…the tropics…see section on viral diseases below.
  6. Body lotion, which in retrospect is likely unnecessary given the humidity.

Clothes

  1. 5 pairs Patagonia travel chonies (underpants, gringos) which are washable and easily dried. Don’t travel without these ladies.
  2. 3 swim suits, two of which are Patagonia-made and they should sponsor me ’cause I buy all their stuff and even though the stuff’s expensive it’s really worth it. I buy the same damn swim suit every field season and it rocks for serious underwater work. No messy or uncomfortable straps and can take my hard wear and tear.
  3. 5 t-shirts (probably too many).
  4. 3 tank tops (ditto).
  5. 3 pairs of shorts: 1 nice, 1 water use, 1 for daily wear.
  6. 2 pants: 1 nice for meeting with important people, 1 for cool nights and morning.
  7. 1 pair of tights. I found that traveling in these is very comfortable, warm, and easy.
  8. 1 skirt for fancy night and attempting to look respectful…probably failing.
  9. 2 long-sleeved technical fabric shirts for cool nights and bug repellent.
  10. 1 Patagonia R-1 technical fleece jacket. Have worn everyday since I got here.  
  11. 1 old manky Stanford sweatshirt. Can’t go anywhere without this baby, even though its older than most of you reading this blog. My dad bought it for me in 1998 when I got into Stanford for graduate school. It’s like my safety blanket and has been to every continent sans Antarctica with me. Many photos of me in the field show me in this POS. It’s ripped to shreds at the cuffs and is not warm at all anymore, but it does serve as a shield from the tropical cold after a dive and keeps the mossies (mosquitos, people), sand flies, and other nasties that want a piece of me from getting a bite.  

Moai and Tara

Scientific tangent: Zika virus

Since I am a scientist that studies viruses, perhaps this blog should have something useful in it. So here’s an educational tangent, about Zika. Zika virus is one of the diseases that I aim to prevent by wearing long shirts and pants while working in the tropics. I’ve already got a few tropical diseases (amoebic dysentery being the most recent and wow did that suck) but for the most part have been lucky. Yet many researchers who travel to and of course the people who live in the areas we work are exposed to many serious tropical viral diseases, the most currently notorious of which is Zika virus. Zika is an arbovirus in the viral family Flaviviridae that includes Dengue and West Nile.

Zika virus was originally discovered in African monkeys in the 1940’s by people looking for Yellow Fever. Although all the most recent discussions of Zika have focused on Brazil, and although the origin of the disease is Africa in where there were small outbreaks since the 1950’s, the first major Zika outbreak was on the island of Yap in the South Pacific in the late 1990’s where it infected a large majority of the inhabitants. Since I don’t have access to the internet I can’t give you any numbers; clearly I’ve become too dependent on Wikipedia. But this major outbreak outside of Africa was probably due to transmission of the virus from its native African mosquito (Aedes egypti) to other more urban-style and broadly prevalent mosquitos like Aedes albopictus.

But the second outbreak was in Moorea, the French Polynesian island that Tara will land at in October and where my lab’s recent research on coral reef viruses and bacteria is focused. When the outbreak occurred in Moorea, it was first thought to be a nasty strain of dengue fever or West Nile, two other mosquito borne viral diseases with the similar symptoms of high fever, rash, and severe nerve and joint pain. Again, like on Yap, a large portion of the population got the disease in Moorea, and it was severe enough that people sought treatment at the local hospital, which was overwhelmed. It wasn’t until the 2015 Brazilian outbreak that people realized in retrospect that the outbreak in Moorea was not dengue.  

Effects and Treatment of Zika

Two major complications of this nasty disease are birth defects and neurological issues that are long-lasting. One of the researchers I met in Moorea had been afflicted with the virus in 2009 (I think) and she still suffers from partial paralysis in her left leg. My cousin in Dominican Republic got a similar symptom from West Nile. This is symptom is called Guillain-Barré (French pronunciation) disease and includes a variety of neurological signs and symptoms. For those who are curious, a sign of a disease is something that is visual like a rash, but a symptom is something that is recorded like fatigue or malaise. Anyways, remember, at the time of the Moorea outbreak, Zika was not rediscovered yet and so data were not taken on the number of children and adults or their signs and symptoms that were associated with this outbreak. But just last year, however, the World Health Organization started using the local doctors on French Polynesia to determine if the outbreak then also caused an outbreak of microcephaly in Moorea and Yap as it has been shown in Brazil. Since the population of these small Polynesian islands is very low, the doctors generally know almost all the local residents, so this kind of work can be done. To my knowledge it is unclear what the results of these outbreaks were in those two islands, but based on the 4 different and very large signs I saw at the Easter Island airport, it’s very clear people are concerned here. And they should be, as this new disease can be very serious to adults and pregnant mothers. Scientist have also found that it can be transmitted in bodily fluids such as blood and also sexually transmitted. Research on Zika has been very fast paced, and just recently a receptor that is unique to the virus was discovered, so hopefully we’ll have a vaccine soon. At the same time, methods to prevent spread of the virus have been using symbiotic bacteria that infect the mosquitos has not only been developed but actually used in urban areas in USA. However, taking personal protections to prevent breeding of and bites from mossies are the most essential way to keep Zika at bay.

Day 1 on the Tara

Tally:

22 hours of travel: one car, three planes, one taxi, one hike, one boat trip.

4 whacks to the head on my hatch.

1 face plant on the deck.

1 beer.

At least 10 cups of coffee.

1 amazing fish stew.

Getting there

So here I am, on the Tara Expedition. When I started this blog it was 7pm last night and the crew was returning from some much needed shore leave and exercise. They have been at sea for two weeks straight so it’s not surprising they want to stretch their legs. The flights here were mostly easy – many, but easy. My first flight was PDX-Dallas, and we were delayed, leaving me only minutes to pee and buy food before boarding onto the new flight to Santiago. That flight was long but a redeye, so I got at least 4 hours of sleep and got to watch two Marvel movies. Um the X-men movie kind of sucked. How is that even possible?

Bad movies about mutants aside, Chile was a brief but pleasant stop over. I’ve been to Chile before on holiday with Andrew when we toured the southern Torres del Paine National Park and volcano district. Even the two-hour layover reminded how nice and laid back the Chilean people were. The airport was lovely and easy to navigate even with my super crappy Spanish. I longed to spend more time in Chile but that will have to wait till another day.

The flight to Easter Island was surprisingly long – almost six hours; a good reminder how remote this place it. The flight was also remarkably rough. I’ve crossed the Pacific numerous times, and each time there is some turbulence, but that had to be the most intense and sustained turbulence I’ve experienced in a long time. It actually got a bit frightening at one point but the calm of the flight attendants made it seem pretty standard.

Once we arrived into Easter Island / Isla de Pascua / Rapa Nui, I met up with another Taranaut Calixte from Brittany, France, who will be working on the plankton side of the work. He is a young plankton researcher who will be doing a bulk of the water filtering with Guillaume B (there are two Taranauts named Guillaume). One of Tara’s main missions is to catalogue the various plankton communities across the sea. Guillaume told me they have already sampled over 60 sites on his watch. We waited for Calixte’s bag in vain, as his connection was so close from Miami to Santiago that his luggage did not make it. Neither did Chris Voolstra, another Tara PI and our collaborator from the Red Sea, who was delayed overnight in Frankfurt due to a whole airport shutting down due to a security breach. But we were given the bags of two other Tara folk who missed their luggage earlier in the week, so it was win win.

A Polynesian island like no other

Landing in Easter Island, I was immediately struck how different it is than the rest of Polynesia. It is not tall like the Hawaiian Islands or Tahiti or Moorea. It is rather flat with oddly short and squat cinder cones of the volcanos jutting out at the corners. Also, hearing Spanish being spoken in Polynesia is rather disarming, albeit comforting for this non-French speaker. Polynesia’s sordid history is clearly displayed when you realize that in all the islands there are many different languages spoken: English in the Hawaiian Islands, Samoa and New Zealand, French in the Southern French Islands, and Spanish here. The history of this island is strange, mysterious, and also rife with the colonial conquest issues of the past. Chile acquired Easter Island in the late 1880’s but not before many of the locals were either killed or expatriated. It was even run by Mooreans at some point, and also offered up to the British who oddly passed. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to see any of the Moai statues for which Easter Island is famous, but we we will be here a few more days and hopefully get off the boat to see some of the sites.

Onboard Tara

To get to the boat we hired a cab, and when we told him where we were he had never heard of it but figured it out from our description. Also, I had seen Tara from the air so we knew where she was moored. We had to walk our luggage down a steep ravine but it was pleasant outside and another boat was moored alongside Tara. The crew of that ship was at the dock and agreed to buzz our boat and let them know we were waiting ashore. We got picked up at the same time as many of the crew were leaving to spend the afternoon in town. I quickly and sheepishly said hello and gave the required 2-cheek kisses. But then we were rushed off to the boat.

Once on board I wasn’t sure what to do with myself (I still don’t, which is why I am writing this). I image I will feel like for some time until I get my bearings and some directed science tasks. I did meet the captain, Sam, and keeper of the house Marion, immediately. Marion showed me my room, and I hastily unpacked my seasick meds and took 2 before I could succumb. My room is quite sizable and my decision to pack lightly was unnecessary really as there is quite a bit of free storage space.

The boat is really large but the seas here are quite rough, and so we are rocking pretty good. I hung out with another scientist, Emilie Boisson, on the back deck for a few hours, and we talked about the project and some logistics while occasionally laying down on the sea pads to feel better (she was slightly sea sick, too). The air is quite cool and that is nice. I was evening wearing my sweater and pants to stay warm most of the night.

After a while I realized how tired I was (only got about 5 hours of sleep and in a plane, so not good sleep), and so I took a short 1-hour nap. I felt remarkably well after that and even began this blog in the cabin without getting seasick (knock on wood). Dinner was started by Marion and Sam and when I asked if I could help they told me to start drinking beers. Now that’s a task I can do. Dinner was served quite late, around 8 (how European), and really excellent, ling cod (I think based on her description of the fish and its taste and texture) and vegetable curry stew with brown rice and salad. I ate just a little for fear of getting sick (no one wants to barf curry, much alone fish curry), but I wanted like three humongous plates of that stew. I hope all the meals are as amazing.

After dinner I was briefed on some of my duties. As all members of the crew, I am responsible for lunch and dinner duties as well as night watch. Tasks for meals include service (setting the table and serving people), dishes (self-explanatory), and cleaning up. ‘Watch’ is an hour long duty everyone does each night. This essential job requires that you scan the instruments for issues like coming off our safe mooring site (not good), the dinghies or lines on the deck getting screwed up (bad), water in the instruments (very bad), and fire (really really bad). If any of these things happen then I relinquish any responsibility to someone else. For example, if our boat comes off its anchor or drifts too far into a danger zone I wake up Nico, who by my understanding is the second in command. If the wind speeds get above 25 knots (it was around 17-21 during my watch) then I wake up Nico. If there are any water or fire alarms, then I… you guessed it… wake up Nico. The only thing I can do on my own is close the hatches if it begins to rain. All in all, not a bad job, and the hour went quickly, but thank god I took that nap ‘cause I was pretty knackered. I got an early watch, so luckily I could sleep all night after 11pm. I think that was pretty kind of them. In retrospect, I wish I had brought my sweatshirt to watch and also peed beforehand. The only incident during my watch was me eating it on the deck when I tripped over a line while I was checking out a strange noise which ended up being two crew fixing something at the bow. I guess it was a good early lesson to learn… always look at where you are stepping on the deck cause there is a ton of things on it to make you fall down.

Becky’s on the Tara Expedition: Coral Viruses Across the Pacific

The Tara Trip

Apprehension. Excitement. Honor. Complete terror and insane wonder. These are the feelings I have been going through (sometimes all in the same five minutes) when I think about my voyage on the Tara. Tara you say? Yes Tara! Tara is a 36 meter (that’s ~110 ft for you Americans) sailing ship, devoted to the collection scientific samples and the dissemination of knowledge and good will across the world. Tara is currently on its 11th oceanic mission called the Tara Pacific Expedition which our lab was asked to join back in late 2015. Our lab’s mission is to help collect, catalogue and evaluate the viruses associated with two species of coral across the entire Pacific. In December of 2015 I travelled to Tara headquarters in Paris with my postdoctoral research and colleague Dr. Jerome Payet, who is an expert in aquatic virus ecology and conveniently French. Jerome helped me navigate and fall in love with Paris those few days  (merci beaucoup Jerome!) but more importantly helped the newly assembled Tara Pacific Team devise a sampling strategy and determine a few of the many logistical issues associated with the coral virus aspects of this expedition.

Tara anchored in Panama during the first leg of the trip. Photo by Maren Ziegler.

Most of the members of the scientific and logistics team are European (mostly French), as the Tara program is funded by the European Union and other European and international partners. In fact, our lab is only one of two non-European labs heading the scientific mission of the Tara Pacific expedition, and on the boat I will be the only one who doesn’t speak French. Doh! But what an honor to be chosen to lead this endeavor, and we were so lucky to be asked to participate! Thanks to everyone who threw our names into the collaborator hat!

Becky and 'conveniently French' Jerome during the planning meeting in Paris.

Becky and ‘conveniently French’ Jerome during the planning meeting in Paris.

The Tara Team

So since December the Tara team has been tirelessly getting the boat, equipment, permits, and all the amazing amount of paperwork and other 10,000 things done to launch the expedition in May. The boat successfully sailed from Paris to Miami and then Miami through the Panama Canal where the first leg of this year’s expedition started. Our very own Ryan McMinds was sent on that leg where he was instrumental in augmenting and finalizing the underwater protocol for collecting the corals. Ryan along with our friend and collaborator from KAUST Maren and ended their trips on the west coast of Panama.

Getting ready to dive in Panama

Collection site in Panama. Photo by Ryan McMinds

Can You Say Remote?

Currently the sailing team is in route to Easter Island (Rapa Nui) where I will meet them and journey across some of the most remote islands in the world. And therein lays my apprehension and terror. Now I’ve travelled a lot to many remote and foreign places. I have spent hours and hours on small boats doing coastal marine science, and I have logged hundreds of hours of dive time underwater in many tropical locations. But I have never spent more than 7 days on a boat, and that boat was an 83m (273ft) research vessel Atlantis, not a sail boat! Many of you might think I’m pretty adventurous, but I’m going to admit that I am kind of a wuss. I love traveling in retrospect, but usually when I do it I just want to go home. Yet I need to do this. It’s something every marine biologist dreams of…to be cliché…it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Expeditions like these are amazing life experiences both personally and career wise. It’s gonna forge new scientific collaborations and probably generate life-long bonds among the science team and crew. Never the less my ulcers get a little bigger each time I think about being at sea in the middle of nowhere. Well… it’s not that far you say? Oh yeah? So Easter Island/Rapa Nui is 2,182 miles from its protectorate nation of Chile. Its closest neighbor island is the least populous (only 56 people live there) nation in the world, Pitcairn which is famous for its descendants of the mutinous Bounty crew, a short 1,289 miles away. The island where we disembark, Gambier/Mangareva, is a short jaunt of 1,619 miles away. Also I will have no internet (yeah no politics for 4 weeks) or email (I dread my inbox on the day I return)! YES MIDDLE OF NO WHERE!

Famous Moai on Easter Island. Photo from Wikipedia.

Can You Say, Pristine?

Fortunately middle of nowhere might also mean some of the most pristine reefs of the world. I can barely imagine what I will see and experience. Whales? Sharks? Whale sharks (please please please)? Coral cover and species diversity like I’ve never seen? I hope. I’m also super excited about the microbiology we will be uncovering. We’ve never done such an extensive latitudinal and longitudinal survey of the microbes and viruses associated with corals before. This Tara trip will likely uncover new taxa and diversity like we’ve never recorded before. We might also be able to say what drives much of the co-evolution of these taxa with their symbionts. The data will be a long way in coming, but combining our GCMP data, we’ll hopefully have the most extensive geographical and phylogenetic analysis of the coral holobiont in history thus far. So I’ll keep you updated on the adventure. Wish me good weather, scientific luck, and whale sharks. Au revoir!

Hoping this Panamanian shark's cousins come out to play in the South Pacific. Photo by Ryan McMinds.

Hoping this Panamanian shark’s cousins come out to play in the South Pacific. Photo by Ryan McMinds.

What does a marine biologist do in a landlocked country? Study elephants…

On my first post I declared that I would write about marine mammals, but things have changed since then and now I hope you also welcome posts about the microbiology of elephants. To make the transition easier I will show you a picture of a baby elephant.

DSC00537

Baby Asian elephant at the Elephant Breeding Center in Chitwan

Why I am studying elephants?

I was lucky enough to be given an NSF GRIP award. The goal of GRIP is to partner students with federal agencies. A great opportunity for me since one of my goals has been to work at the Smithsonian. I looked for researchers at the Smithsonian that were taking GRIP students and working with viruses. The lab that peaked my interest was at the Smithsonian National Zoo and works on elephant endotheliotrophic herpes virus (EEHV), a herpesvirus that was detected as fatal only in 1995. Since then about eight different types of EEHV have been detected, but EEHV1 is the most pathogenic. This virus is specifically deleterious to young elephants and can progress to death within 1-7 days after symptoms arise. It has mostly been found in Asian elephants, but there have been some accounts of EEHV African elephant infections.

The project

My project sounded pretty amazing. I would go to the Smithsonian to get some molecular biology training and then fly to Nepal, live for 4 weeks in Chitwan National Park, and check elephants for EEHV; thus saving the baby elephants!!! To sample elephants I will take trunk wash samples since its one of the most effective ways to test elephants for this virus. Basically, a veterinarian pours some saline (salt and water) down an elephants trunk and the mahout instructs the elephant to blow it back out into a container.

Reality

After a two week training at the Smithsonian, I packed up my molecular and fieldwork bags and landed in Kathmandu, Nepal. My plan was to collect samples the week I landed. Two and half weeks later and I just collected my first set of trunk wash samples. I declared them the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in Nepal. Not that Nepal is not a beautiful country (e.g. picture below), just that the hurdles to get these trunk washes illuminated my tubes of samples with a magical essence.

DSC00309

Rhino making its way to the Rapti river in Chitwan

The struggle

In addition to working with the Smithsonian, I also wanted to develop my fieldwork skills. So why not attempt fieldwork on a topic I just learned, on field techniques I am not trained to do, in a country where I don’t speak the language, and where electricity is sparse. Needless to say many problems occurred, from permits, to miscommunication about the support available to me in the field, and socioeconomic problems.

While I have been able to manage many of the problems because of the help of local Chitwan people and the support from NTNC, the socioeconomic aspect of this experience has been the most difficult and thought provoking. I think I used the word “socioeconomic” in almost all the proposals I wrote on this project, but I had a limited understanding on how my project could affect the economy or society in Chitwan’s elephant industry. I thought my research would provide a free healthcare service to the elephants of Nepal and people would be mostly enthusiastic about my study, right? Wrong.

I was advised to work with elephants that are privately owned, which are mostly used for tourism. While I have not spoken with all the owners, I have talked to some of the major members in the committee and the consensus from the ~45 elephant owners has been that my study would be a burden to them both economically and socially. Why do they think this, you ask? Their hesitance comes from a previous study conducted to survey elephants with Tuberculosis (TB). A bacterial disease that infects many mammals including humans and elephants and is transmitted through the air.

I was told that elephants that were diagnosed with TB could no longer partake in tourist activities (to avoid transmitting TB to people) and were not allowed into the forest (to avoid transmitting TB to the wildlife) until the elephants were treated for TB. Now it is seen as an economically poor decision to have scientist look for a pathogen in their elephants, because they risk losing money from tourism and are forced to treat their elephants. These consequences were especially troubling, because besides the diagnosis their animals looked otherwise healthy. Also, a positively diagnosed animal may be seen in the community as inferior and may decrease the animal’s value.

My solution 

The elephant owners protested that if a diagnosis of an illness is made then the scientist must also provide a solution and treatment. However, I can not provide these resources. Instead I tried to provide education about EEHV to elephant owners. For instance, TB is not like EEHV and should not affect the owners economically. EEHV has not been shown to be transmissible to humans or other animals, so tourism should not be affected. If an adult elephant was diagnosed with EEHV they do not need to be treated, but it is important to know that they can transfer the virus to a calf.

Although, mostly (and I mean mostly) all the elephant owners are skeptical about my research there was enough of them that supported my study; hence the picture of my beautiful sample collection.

DSC00521

Elephant trunk wash samples.

Frequent Flier

Well, I just hit 50,000 miles that I’ve flown for this project. Since March. And to think, I laughed when Becky ‘warned’ me that the job would require a lot of travel…

Oh, btw, I’m in Montserrat. The volcanic island in the Caribbean that inspired Jimmy Buffett’s timeless classic ‘Volcano’. YouTube it.

Hopped on another little plane and landed on another little island.

Hopped on another little plane and landed on another little island.

I’m helping the Waitt Institute out with some ecological surveys, and in return, I hope to be able to get some samples for my project. But I found out about this just 7 days ago and am only just settling in to my accommodations. Such fun!

Because why not

Because why not

Antigua

Merci Beaucoup!

Although we generally like to post all the fun details of our project, doing fieldwork internationally is hard. Mountains of paperwork and preparation go into our trips (much of it often stressful and last-minute), and when we arrive, we generally don’t know the local corals very well, don’t know the language as well as we think we do, and don’t know the area at all. We’re learning as we go about all the best ways to make our trips go smoothly.

But for now, as I sit in the Paris airport on my way home, I’d like to give a shout-out to all the people who have helped make this particular trip happen. One of the first contacts Jerome made on the island was with Le Club de Plongee Suwan Macha – an organization of SCUBA divers that works like a co-op, buying and maintaining resources that are shared by members at a very affordable price. This system worked great for us as a way to get many customized dives in and seems like an awesome set-up for scientific diving in general. We even borrowed a few tanks of air for some of our ‘labwork’, unrelated to diving. After we joined the club, the acting president, Pierre Grisoni, volunteered his time to drive the boat and refill tanks for us for all the dives we did on the West coast of the island. These dives were essential to our collections and formed the core of our trip! Merci beaucoup à Pierre and the rest of the club!

Thanks, Pierre!

Thanks, Pierre and Suwan Macha!

Another important contact was Dr. Jean-Pascal Quod, president of Reef Check France and manager of Pareto Ecoconsult. Jean-Pascal and the diving club SUBEST were instrumental in our collections on the East side of the island, and showed us some really great reefs over there.

Perhaps the most important local entity was The Natural Marine Reserve of La Réunion (RNMR), which provided us with local collections permits and prepared our CITES export permits. Dealing with this paperwork is often the most difficult part of our work, and being able to work with the local management authority is essential to our project.

Many other people have been helpful on this particular trip. For starters, I bummed a ride to and from the Portland airport with my parents, which is excellent. I also left my car with them and got lots of other help from them before leaving. I believe Amelia’s mother also took her and Jerome to the airport, after quickly sewing together my BCD weight pocket for me. Ummm, awesome!! Then there’s Jerome’s mom, who on multiple occasions hosted us all for outstanding dinners while we were in Reunion. Everything’s easier in life with parents like these!

Les parents

Les parents McMinds: merci for all you do

We also met many of Jerome’s friends and family while there, and a number of them provided us with delicious food, too. Thank you to all of you for showing us your island and making the trip great!

Since we first started planning the trip, there has been one person who made the right contacts, spoke the right language, and put in a lot of effort to get all the permitting and paperwork done on the French end of things: our postdoc Dr. Jerome Payet. In addition to pre-trip organization, he also acted as our guide, facilitator, translator, and co-director throughout the trip. I’ve worked with Jerome a lot in the last couple years, and he has been an integral part of the lab for a bit longer than me, but working on this particular project was generous of him. This trip came at a special time for Jerome, as well, since he is now moving on to work with a different lab at OSU. The work he put into it is thus very much appreciated. Thank you – we will miss you!!

Au revoir, Jerome

Au revoir, Jerome

Intro to Sampling Strategy

The sampling is ramping up here in Reunion, and the checkboxes are filling up next to target corals. In the last three days, we have collected samples from 27 corals, representing 22 species from 16 genera, 11 families, and 2 classes. Since the actual physical taking of a sample involves just rubbing a syringe against it and breaking off a tiny chunk, our number may not actually seem very high. However, there are a few things that make the process take longer than theory would predict. As Amelia mentioned in the last post, one thing that’s slowing us down is the environment. We’ve discovered before that working in shallow water is not easy. In the lagoon here on Reunion, the water is often so shallow that we are trying to spot live corals in ankle-deep water, then having to find a way to lie down to examine them without crushing the reef or sitting on a poisonous stonefish. In other places, the water is about waist-deep, and the huge waves breaking on the crest continue into the back-reef, sloshing us around amongst the sharp corals and stinging fire-corals, and making it very difficult to stay steady enough for photos and sampling. Plus, it’s winter here, and the water is ‘cold’. 76 degrees Fahrenheit seems warm at first, but after ~4 hours of being submersed in it, the water still saps out all of our body heat. We’re getting cold, sunburned, and beat up!

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But if that was the only problem, I’d say we’d just have to suck it up and get the work done! But another, bigger problem is that we have to find the corals. Not just any, but a relatively specific list of coral types. We’re only planning to take a small number of samples from each type while we’re here, and I’d prefer not to take them all from the same location at the same time. I mentioned before that confounding factors can make it difficult to determine which variable is responsible for a given trend. If all we found on Day 1 were Porites and Acropora, and we immediately took all of the trip’s samples for those species, we would have confounded our species variable with time and location. Later, if we took all of our Fungia samples on a single, different day, it would be hard to be confident that differences in the microbes between our Porites and Fungia samples were actually attributable to host specificity. An equally good alternative explanation would be that microbes on corals on Day 1 were different than microbes on corals on Day 5, no matter which species we sampled on each day. This is likely to be true for many microbes due to differences in disease prevalence, tidal height, current direction, light level, etc. To be confident that differences are due to coral species, we need to have a clear sampling plan. A solution is to find and sample replicates from many different coral species on the same day. Differences among these samples would be more confidently attributable to individual colonies and, through replication, to coral species. So we are doing our best to find locations that have high levels of diversity. High diversity reefs were easy to find at Lizard Island and KAUST and made our sampling there go great!

We are not having problems finding Porites (massive) and Acropora (branching)...

We are not having problems finding Porites (massive) and Acropora (branching)…

This Fungia, however, is the only one we’ve found, so far.

The first couple of days that we were here in Reunion, we spent a lot of time exploring the lagoon just down the street from our rental house. We chose the house hoping that the majority of our sampling could be just a short walk and swim away. However, we weren’t finding much in those reefs. Of the ~16 families of corals that we hoped to find here, only 2 were common, and we only found 5 there in total. So after a weekend of exploring the island for fun (escaping the critical eyes of the heavy crowds at the beach), we began our sampling in the lagoon of Trou d’Eau, a short drive south of us. The reefs there were, if anything, less abundant and diverse than the ones here. We got samples from 5 families. So the next day we went even further south, to Saint-Leu, to see if our luck would be better. Indeed, we found a reef that had much more cover and much more diversity than those up north. We collected samples from 8 families, 5 of which were new! Still, with a total of 10 families, we were still missing a few that have been very common and conspicuous in other wide-ranging Indo-Pacific reefs that I have sampled. So we decided yesterday to try a different environment and brave the shark-infested fore-reefs via scuba. The day was great – I absolutely love the feeling of being on a boat in the tropics, and the feeling of breathing clean, cool air through a regulator while suspended underwater. Plus, the sampling is way easier while diving under the waves, and doesn’t tend to get us all beat up. But the reef wasn’t very diverse. We found 5 families of corals – only 1 of them new.

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Ahh, I love being on the water!

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Thought this was a Montipora – closer inspection reveals it’s just another species of Porites!

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Weekend getaway

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Cold mists of the volcano

As the trip reaches its half-way point, we are ready to buckle down and get going on replicates of what we already have. We’ll keep our eyes out for the missing coral families, but would be relatively satisfied with the current repertoire if it’s all we wind up finding. Today, we head south again, this time diving on the fore-reef, where we hope to find a beautiful combination of easy sampling and diverse corals.

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Finding the moon and meeting Tiki

We had spent the weekend with Jerome’s family and after an evening of food and laughter we were ready to explore the island. Réunion has many different microclimates with landscapes ranging from arid forests to tropical beaches. On our way to the Piton de la Fournaise volcano we reflected on how these different microclimates reminded us of a mixture of places across the globe. We even found the moon!

Mountain or moon?

Mountain or moon?

Piton de la Fournaise is a shield volcano and is one of the world’s most active volcanoes. It is around 530,000 years old and 2,631m high. Piton de la Fournaise is one of two volcanoes, the other being Piton des Neiges, that make up Réunion. Up until a few weeks ago, it’s most recent eruption was in 1986. Due to its activity, the hikes circling its peak were closed, but we were still able to get an awesome view of it!

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Piton de la Fournaise!

Of course, we couldn’t have done any of this without our awesome matching hats!

Jerome's mom outfitted us with matching hats to protect us from the sun.

Jerome’s mom outfitted us with matching hats to protect us from the sun.

Now that the weekend is over it’s time to get down to business. Monday came bright and early with birds chirping and the smell of science in the air! Like all good scientists we had our ritual morning coffee and then rolled out into the field. Spending the majority of the day sampling we were able to see most of the lagoon in Saint-Gilles. In the lagoon alone we were able to find five different clades of coral, a plethora of sea cucumbers and zero sharks.

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A snapshot of some of the corals we collected! (Montipora sp., Porites cylindrica and Porites lichen)

The main thing that I have to say about Monday is this: weight belts. Even though we were in a shallow lagoon our buoyant weight kept on pushing us up, making it difficult – but not impossible – to sample. From shore I’m sure we looked like two poorly coordinated synchronized swimmers with our feet flapping in the air as we tried to stay down.

Today, we hopped in the car and went to a different section of the island in hopes of finding a more biodiverse reef. We struck gold and were met by beautiful reefs in crystal clear water. But there was one catch: strong currents (everyone’s favorite). The currents quickly introduced Ryan and I to the fire corals in the surrounding area and by the end of the field day I’d say we all became good friends.

Fortunately, we had brought Tiki with us so we weren’t scathed too badly. Tiki is the good luck charm of the Vega-Thurber lab and has been on almost every field trip the lab has gone on. That being said, Tiki has traveled a lot and spent many days in the sea (his black hair turned blond is proof). I’ll allow Tiki to introduce himself:

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And so folks, that concludes the past few days in Réunion!

Bienvenue à la Réunion!

Hi guys! My name is Amelia Foster. I’m currently an undergrad in Becky’s lab though I graduate soon (woo!). By the end of this summer, in fact, I will have finished my majors in Microbiology and International Studies. I started volunteering in Becky’s lab as a sophomore in 2012. Under her mentorship I have learned important molecular biology techniques associated with coral reef ecology. Recently, I have been given the opportunity to learn fieldwork techniques with Ryan and Jerome in Réunion Island, France.

Our flight pattern from Oregon to Réunion

Our flight pattern from Oregon to Réunion

After 30+ hours of flying, an inordinate amount of babies crying and lots of bread and cheese we arrived in Réunion just as the sun was coming up over the water. Originally named Bourbon, Réunion is a French department located in the Indian Ocean just east of Madagascar. Volcanic eruptions beginning 5 million years ago formed the island that today houses around 850,000 people. The island was uninhabited until 1643 when the French sent twelve convicts there into exile. In the mid 17th century the island was further colonized. The settlers recruited a large amount of slave labor, from Africa, Madagascar, India and Tamil until the year 1848, which marked the abolition of slavery. Now, Réunion has a multi-cultural identity with people from all over the world.

Since arriving on the island just a few short days ago we have become fully immersed (though I still can’t speak at all) in French and have begun setting up field studies. From the house to the market to the beach, my daily life has become a game of charades. Picking up a few words here and there I can currently string together a few sentences that are inapplicable to almost all situations:

Je ne sais pas et jáime l´pomme et l´chat.  

Ryan is doing much better than I am and can almost carry a conversation in French. But Jerome, who is from Réunion, remains our savior in almost every situation.

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Hanging out with Jerome’s family

Jerome has not only introduced us to his family and friends on the island but has told us of the terrifying homme-coq. The homme-coq has the body of a chicken and the legs of a man. It roams around the island, terrorizing the people and stealing children. So, we better watch out.

But even in the face of the perilous homme-coq -and not to mention the bull sharks– we have been able to begin the preliminary steps in setting up our fieldwork. Ryan has already given me a crash course in coral identification as we were scouring the lagoon near our house in Saint Gilles for different genera of corals. And the other night we helped Jerome collect water samples to later analyze for viral content.

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La bobine beach, where we are currently sampling

Today, we are coordinating with local dive shops to acquire tanks and begin sampling a few of the corals we identified.

The GCMP

Turbinaria stellulata. Family Dendrophylliidae (“Clade II”)[1]

In my last post, I mentioned that I was continuing the project I started last summer at Lizard Island, Australia. That’s true, but in my haste to get a post out about my current trip, I neglected some important updates. First and foremost: thanks to an NSF grant through the Dimensions of Biodiversity program, our project is official, and we have a name! The Global Coral Microbiome Project, or GCMP. The team consists of members of the Vega Thurber Lab at Oregon State University and the Medina Lab at Penn State University. Along with more money and a bigger team, the goals of the project have expanded a bit. We’re still aiming to understand how different corals have evolved to structure their microbial communities, but, as the new name implies, we are now also looking at how these communities differ geographically in corals around the world. We know that corals that are related to each other can inhabit vastly different environments, so describing the microbes they associate with in only a subset of those environments wouldn’t get the whole picture. For example, corals that look like this:

Porites lobata, Pocillopora verrucosa, and Pocillopora …?

can be found in places as wide ranging as the cold, nutrient-rich, upwelling-fueled waters of the Eastern Pacific, the calm waters of the Society Islands in the South Pacific (where I took this photo), and the crystal clear, positively balmy waters of the Red Sea, from whence I am writing this post. Most taxonomists place individuals from either end of their range into the same species, but at some point that is an arbitrary decision. There are clear physiological differences within coral species that are correlated with geography. If you transplanted a colony of Pocillopora damicornis from Panama to Saudi Arabia, the elevated water temperatures would almost certainly cause it to bleach and die. Why? Dunno. Some researchers, such as the Meyer lab at OSU, are trying to figure that out by looking at genetic differences in the corals. Others suggest that corals can gradually acclimate to such extremes in temperature. We think those hypotheses are part of the story, but that the microbes that live with corals might tell another important part. After all, the interactions with microbes through disease and bleaching are the most common causes of coral death. If we compare the differences in microbes across a host species’ range of environments to the differences explainable by the coral’s evolutionary history, we might be able to explain why some corals are more tolerant of variation in the environment than others.

Reveal your secrets to me, oh corals!

As I procrastinate on my mountains of queued labwork, I am happily organizing and editing my photos from the field. We have photographed each sampled coral colony, hoping to use the collection as a backup for the metadata that we collected simultaneously. The photo at the top of the page depicts the last coral we sampled on this trip – one that had me pumping my fists underwater in excitement! It’s not a particularly rare species, but Jesse and I had a long wish list, a short span of time, and a limited number of reefs to explore. In order to describe the broad levels of variation in the coral microbiome, we are trying to sample at least two species from each coral family we come across, in each location. After we visit a number of reefs around the world, we hope to have enough replication within each family to describe how they differ from one another. As our tanks of air slowly got lower on gas, we still hadn’t found a symbiont-bearing representative of the Dendrophylliidae, though we knew it was around here somewhere! Just as I had given up on it, I spotted that yellow rock. And to be honest, the excitement I felt at that moment is the real reason that I do what I do.

The prize is won.

The prize is won.