#vip2015

I had the opportunity to connect with Don Olavides, a Filipino researcher studying sea cucumbers.  He was kind enough to show us how the scientists process specimens that are brought in from their dives, so that they can be further studied back in the lab.

NOTE: Apologies for my terrible videography skills!

Check out this short tour of the Cal Academy’s field laboratory in Puerto Galera, Philippines, guided by the Academy’s curator of invertebrate zoology Dr. Rich Mooi.

This was shot fairly late in the evening to avoid the crush of scientists crowding the lab earlier in the afternoon. So there were not as many beautiful specimens on display unfortunately. But I think it still gets across the idea of how the lab is laid out and what our scientists are working on.

Thanks to Dr. Mooi for being a good sport and guiding us on a tour of the lab! Here’s Rich with a particularly cool sea urchin he’s studying.

One of the awesomest parts about being on the 2015 Verde Island Passage expedition is getting to connect with and educate the local communities around the area. For our presentations, we try very hard to emphasize the enormous wealth in marine biodiversity that the Philippines possesses.

For these island communities, being able to see the ocean around them in a new way is so powerful and maybe life-changing. For our outreach events, you can literally seeing hundreds of minds get blown away when they realize how magnificent the coral reefs are, just a few meters down from the ocean surface. Imagine seeing something your whole life and not realizing that it is ALIVE and so precious to all the life around you?

Here’s ichtyologist Dr. Kent Carpenter from Old Dominion University explaining (in Filipino!) why he calls the Verde Island Passage the “center of the center of marine biodiversity” in the world. 

We’ve completed two outreach events we’ve organized as part of the 2015 Philippines Verde island Passage expedition. It has been a really remarkable experience getting to connect with local Filipinos to educate them about marine biodiversity and environmental sustainability.

Our first outreach event was for a group of about 60 high school teachers at the Puerto Galera National High School. Although they all lived and taught not very far from the ocean, they learned a lot about the marine life in their local area, from tunicates to barnacles to nudibranch.

Today is the first of four outreach events that Meg Burke, Lindzy Bivings and I will be leading all around the Batangas area. I’m nervous and excited about sharing about science, biodiversity, and sustainability for people on local communities in the Philippines!

Our first stop today is a training for about 60 teachers at the Puerto Galera National High School, not far from our dive resort. We’ve got a full day of action planned for the educators, including a coral sketching activity, examining a “habitat in a bucket”, doing a rapid trash assessment of the local area, meeting some of our scientists participating in the expedition, and showing off a few live specimens for them.

Last night, we collected several items from the beach to use during our outreaches, including a pailful of dead coral, some rocks with algae and small animals living on them, and a beautiful assortment of sea stars. It was a lot of fun just wading around in the water at night with flashlights looking for marine life. So many neat fish, eel, sea urchins, and more are active at night!

Working at the Cal Academy, I have spent a good amount of time in our aquarium, particularly our main setpiece, the giant Philippines coral tank. I must admit I have wondered if the sheer diversity and density of life in our tank actually represents what you would encounter here in the Philippines.

Having done several dives now in the Verde Island Passage area, I can now testify that the actual coral reefs here in the Philippines ARE as colorful, diverse, and magnificent as our tank back at the Academy. The GoPro can not capture the brilliant colors, textures, and movement of all the marine life in even a small area of the reef here. But these videos give you a flavor of what you would see.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we’ve got a really neat makeshift lab that we’ve set up in the dining area of the Atlantis Beach Resort. I did a little walk through and spotted these cool specimens that were recently collected.

Kelly Markello was working on this beautiful echinoderm. It appears to be leeching dye into the alcohol it’s preserved in.