Our lab, with three grad students, joined our collaborator in the FL Keys to do some final sample collections. The trip was a little different in that we stayed at a small hotel near Mote Marine Lab rather than at the station, but the hotel is part of a diving facility so we could easily get tanks and rent a boat!
Prepping vacusip bottles for collecting In/Ex samples
Our goals were to: 1) Involve students who would be working on previously collected datasets so they get a feel for the field and sample collection, 2) collect new samples of “incurrent” and “excurrent” (known as the In/Ex method) seawater from sponges for several species that we were missing data for (due to contamination in our big set of collections back in 2021), 3) test out an oxygen sensor to get simultaneous oxygen measurements of the incurrent and excurrent seawater – this can give us an idea of respiration for the sponges and we can see if it differs across sponge species!
The Fiore Lab 