Cherry blossom time

Well, it has been a very long time since our last post, but we have been very busy. We had another visitor from the U.S. Flat Stanley arrived from Tennessee after we got back from Nagasaki. He joined us for the Cherry Blossom Festival up in Nago at the beginning of February. Okinawa has the earliest blooms in Japan, obviously because we are so much farther south than the main islands. Stanley from TN met Stanley from Arkansas, who was visiting our friend Carey at the same time. They both had a lot of fun with Martin at the Isakaya near our apartment!



So, just for something different, we've done a lot more diving! See below, Ninja Nate is ready to go in at Manza. The water is actually warmer than the air this time of year! Nate also got a great picture of a clownfish in his anemone.



A group of us from the lab went on four dives at Oura-wan Bay. This bay is a very unique habitat for the area as it connects directly to the Pacific ocean. It is also the future sight for a U.S. military helicopter landing pad that will be created by filling in part of the bay. People have been fighting this for about five years, but somehow it seems that it will eventually get built there anyway. We saw some really neat things on these dives, like a large octopus that changed colors about 10 times as it swam away from us. Obuchi-san pointed out this scorpion fish that perked up when he poked it!



There were ascidians (sea squirts) and sponges galore at the sites we dove in Oura Bay. This is a picture of a purple and white nudibranch (sea slug) on top of a sponge and a red ascidian. Inside ascidians and sponges is often where I find the leucothoid amphipods that I study. The orange amphipod is another new species that we collected from Oura Bay and nowhere else!



Hold on to your hats! The most exciting part of the last month (in Kris' world, anyhow) is that we have set up a tank in the lab for keeping live amphipods! The intention is to keep ascidians alive and to study the ecology of the amphipods living in the ascidians. There are lots of bugs to be worked out, but we have already learned some of what not to do. See exhibit 1 below: Box design A with live tunicates in them.



We captured some live amphipods and put them in the boxes with the tunicates and were very excited. We came back in the morning and all of the amphipods had escaped from the boxes and through the filter. (I assume they went through the filter because they are nowhere to be found). Hence, box design B. We replaced the styrofoam with fine mesh on the sides of the boxes and a piece of a plastic "Pet" bottle on the top. This design seems to be less flawed, but hopefully we will find out tomorrow when we get some more live pods to put inside!



Until next time....Ja mata.