Cages, Coring, and Crabbing, Oh My!

Welcome Fall 2011 Interns!!  Here's a quick recap of our first few days at the fishpond in photos...

Learning how to take cores to measure infauna.

Success - nice delineation!

Mapping out predator exclusion cages.

What did we get?  Using a sieve to collect infauna from the cores.

The road less traveled... really. 

Rinsing cores into the sieve to capture infauna

A formidable foe... and the object of our crabbing quest - Thalamita crenata

Measuring up.  Width, length, gender - just the facts.

Welcome All You Guys to the New Session of LAIP Internship

Hi everyone, welcome back to He'eia Fishpond for the new session of LAIP Internship. This session starts on July 12 and ends on December 10. We are going to continue the algae research and cage experiment like what we did from last session with our new awesome interns.

Last Saturday was a really productive research day since we finished all the core samplings at all 6 sites in the fishpond, which was planned to finish within 3 days-----Yehhhhhhh!! ^o^. Starting from this Tuesday afternoon, we will set the traps for catching predatory crabs at the fishpond, and it will also be fun. If somebody wants to say something or share their wonderful experience with us, you are more than welcome to do so. Let's make this blog one of the most exciting and effective communication ways among us.

See you soon at the fishpond, and have a great week!

June 25 - The Grand Finale!

On June 25 we said "A Hui Hou" to our most recent group of awesome LAIP interns: Arthur, Tiana, Leila, Sawako, Martin, Chris, and Kirsten.  The interns gave short presentations to family, friends and colleagues about their research work in the fishpond over the last 6 months.  One of our previous interns, Angela, even stopped by to say hi!  Well done one and all!!  We were even visited by a group of voyaging canoes from our island neighbors to the south.  A great day.  We hope that you will stay in touch and check in on the blog from time to time to see what is happening.

Ioleka'a

Auntie Donnie's was straight-up spiritual. Here are some great pictures of the LAIP wünderkind learning and frolicking in the lo'i.

Everyone did really well on their presentations this weekend; I am so very proud of the work you've done, and I miss you already!

Other pics here: http://fishpondfever.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/ike-aina/

LAIP Journal, Tues Week 21. 9:30AM-6PM

6:55 AM - What excitement and adventure does today hold?? Today began with an early morning trek across the Pali, aboard bus 55 enroute to Windward Mall! Right on schedule and…SHIITAKE! WHEW*** Thank goodness I opted for shrimp instead of Spam© in my lunchbox full of fried rice today when crossing the Pali, otherwise I might be late! (unfunny)
8:40 AM- Ahh yes, here we are at Windward Mall…NOOO!! The van to Coconut Island is leaving!!! *SIGHHHhh I guess I’ll wait for the next one. At least I got into a great chat with a scientist who just got back from Palmyra working on the dying coral down there. (cool)
9:30AM-12:30AM – I’m finally here at Coconut Island in Megsie’s Lab. The sorting of various invertebrates, namely “other worms” (non-polychaetes I think), commences. I count at least 50 non-polychaete worms before I realize how badly I need coffee and music (Thanks for the coffee and I-pod Dj MegaMegz!). Megsie’s sample’s are soaked in formalin with a dye to expose the invertebrates. Our job is to remove these invertebrates from the forest of debris using tweezers (good looks on the straight tweez Leila!) and isolate them in a solution of ethyl alcohol where Snrta. Megs can do her thang. (I hope I got the terms and processes correct.) (interesting, yet monotonous)
~11:30AM 1:00PM– Feeling the effects of just coffee in my stomach. I came across a funky octopus shaped looking organism amidst the sea of worms and sediment. (wired)
1:00PM-2:00PM – BLAAAAAH (fatigued)
2:00PM-6:00PM – LAIP interns arrive! Everyone’s working on their upcoming presentations. Sawako and I found some diagrams we will use for our posterboard, including a mangrove food web, and old pics of He’eia pond. We reaped fruitless efforts using Excel (curse you!) to make a graph of the carbon isotope data of Thalameda and shrimps in the pond. I’m pretty much a zombie strung out on caffeine. (undead)
6:00PM onward – Thanks for the ride to the mall Dr. Lemus! Thanks for waiting for me while I got pizza Martin..I hope you found your desk! (In fine, im fine)

Top: Found a pic of a food web justin time
Middle: The smell of formalin in the lab made Ti throw up the shaka.
Bottom: Q: What kine fish you catch on the internet? A: Fi---sHHHHHHH!

Na Papa'i ma ka loko i'a 'O He'eia!.......Crabs at He'eia fishpond!

Aloha Kakou 'Apau!

Sorry so late!  I recently recieved the crab photos that Megsie took from the fishpond during a couple make-up days a few weeks ago.  Unfortunately I was unable to get the pictures from the first make-up day so these photos were from the days after. 

We went out in the boat to each site and dropped the big crab traps, the next day we went back out to check them.  The day we were checking the big crab traps, we also layed the smaller crab nets to see which type of smaller crabs there were at the different sites.  The only problem with the smaller crab nets was if we weren't fast enough at pulling the crab nets up, the crabs could climb out or through the net.  That happened a few times and they even fell in the boat!

Another exciting day at Paepae 'O He'eia!

Chris's Blog Post for 5/24 and 5/28/11

Aloha From The Magnificent LAIP Intern Team,

Here is my blog for 5/24/11 and 5/28/11. On Tuesday 5/24 we had a productive day in the sun
brushing loads of sediment off of Megsie's cages, placing small algal quadrats in them to collect data about the amount limu present. We also recorded the sediment content in each quadrat square and if there were spongy mangrove mats. In the first picture on the right side, Kirsten, Megsie, Arthur, and Sawako talk about our awesome discoveries while Judy, Leila, and Martin keep busy with cage brushing.

On Saturday 5/28 we had a good work out during the POH work time in the morning. There was a lot of rock lifting and terrific bonding with the pond 's volunteers and refreshing beauty. During the afternoon we had more fun conducting research in the pond's depths. In the second picture to the left, Megsie leads Martin, Sawako, and Leila to start their work. They used small quadrats in Megsie's cages to check algal cover. Their data collection also included sediment content and if mangrove mats were present.

On the other side of the pond, Sherril, Arthur, Kirsten, and Chris were busy at work. They did algal cover sampling with larger quadrats to measure biomass and took sediment cores to measure chlorphyll. In the top right picture, Sherril(our fearless boat driver), Arthur, and Kirsten get our field equipment ready for action. Chris, pictured at bottom left, works away at reporting the number of quadrat squares for each algae species. He also measured the canopy depth in each algae bunch and collected samples. Arthur, pictured at top left, rises from the thick sediment where he also used large quadrats to collect sediment samples for lab analysis.

That's all for now fishpond pioneers. More excitement to come soon!