Updates on Glacier Bay National Park Corals!

The first expedition to search for deep water corals in Glacier Bay National Park has begun - check out updates here!

Off to Alaska - 19th Aug - 12th Sept

I'm packed and early in the morning i'll be off, so be sure to check out the project pages linked to the right - there are automatic updates posted here and twitter feeds too. The first project will be Glacier Bay National Park Corals (19th Aug - 1st Sept) and the second is Alaska Fjord Corals (3rd - 12th Sept).

There will be chunks of time where I won't have internet, email or even electricity and running water, so the updates may be a spread out, but i'll update as I can so bare with me!

Aloha!
Dr. W.

Packing!

The packing is in full swing - bottles and jars - check! Dissection equipment - check! Diving equipment - check! Maps, papers and permits - check! Now it all just has to fit into the two 50lb bags i'm allowed to take on the plane! 

Aloha!

Dr. W. 

Ten days and counting

It's just ten days until I head out to Glacier Bay National Park, firstly on a little vacation kayaking around the fjords, then onto work, working with the National Park service for a week to look at specific coral locations around the fjords. Then it's onto Juneau, to work on the Alaskan Fjord Coral Reproduction project, another project i'm particularly excited about. I've just started both those project pages, so be sure to check them out!

In other news Jackie, a Ph.D. student who's been doing a ton of histology in my lab this last few weeks, just had her coral reproduction paper accepted for publication in Coral Reefs - congratulations Jackie!

Aloha!

Dr W.

Link - Glacier Bay National Park Project

Link - Alaskan Fjord Coral Reproduction Project

Getting Ready for Projects and Moving!

Getting a research project off the ground is time consuming, you have to think of the project, write the proposal, submit the proposal, maybe have it rejected a few times, and then finally get it funded, organize the cast of characters working on the project, get the equipment together, sort through all the logistics - and then, and only then, can you actually pack your bags and head on out to do science. It definitely takes time.

Finally I am pleased to announce three projects are getting off the ground for the Waller Laboratory, two of them leaving in just a few months, and one leaving in May 2011. In August I'll be headed to Glacier Bay National Park, to do a somewhat scaled down version of the original plan (recon mission), meeting with the Park Service to work out logistics for what will hopefully be a larger project next year and even getting to go out on their boat for two days to take some environmental measurements from coral sites within the park. Check out the blogsite for that expedition if you're interested.

The second project is back to back with the first, from Glacier Bay National Park i'll be headed straight to Juneau to participate in a week long cruise SCUBA diving to collect corals from the fjords. That is the first of five cruises we'll have and is a pretty exciting project, be sure to keep an eye on that blogsite.

And next May, well we finally got the word we're headed back to the Antarctic to look at coral ecosystems in the Drake Passage. Be sure to keep your other eye on that blogsite, exciting things to come in the months ahead.

And the moving? The Waller Laboratory is officially moving, we're packing up and heading out to the Darling Marine Center at the University of Maine. It's going to be a big move and a big change, but an exciting one. That move will start to take place end of this year, and we'll blog about the progress right here.

So many things happening in the lab, including the official beginning to this blog! Individual pages will be updated as things happen, but this main page i'll update every few weeks with progress.....when not in the field that is.

Thats all for now

Dr W.

The Lab

Welcome to our blogsite!

This blog has been set up to support ongoing and new field programs run by researchers and students working in the Waller Laboratory at the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Please check in on us regularly as we prepare for field seasons on various projects around the globe, as well as general updates from the laboratory.