Tela Coral News
Beneath the Surface
August 2024 Expedition: Plankton at Night
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November 6, 2024

Our goal for our August 2024 expedition was to start to understand coral spawning in Tela because it’s critical to any conservation effort. Please see our other August 2024 Expedition posts for more on our planning and lessons.

Based on information we’d gleaned from other parts of the Caribbean, we estimated that the elkhorn corals would spawn two days after the full moon in August and about an hour and a half after sunset. But we knew that was just an estimate. And a few years ago, I’d arrived in the Dominican Republic to discover that the corals were spawning two days early. So, we decided start looking the night after the full moon, just in case. That first night we didn’t expect to see any spawning, but we were giddy with excitement anyway.

Because this reef we were monitoring is very shallow – about 20 feet deep – we knew we could stay underwater for close to two hours and keep watch. But two hours is a long time to look at coral, no matter how pretty, and so after checking and rechecking the coral and not seeing anything happen, you start to amuse yourself.

One fun thing to do is go into the sand spits away from the reef and stick your flashlight in the sand so that it faces upward like a spotlight from a carnival. Within seconds the plankton start to arrive, drawn to the light like moths to a flame. The beam flickers and glitters with life. The sheer variety is astonishing and captivating. One of the other divers had brought a hand magnifier, which helped to bring those glitters into focus.

When it was my turn to peer through the magnifier into the beam, it was like staring into a bonfire that had come alive. I tried to name what I could in my head as the forms flitted past my vision. I saw glass eels thin as a piece of paper, tons of shooting arrow worms, crazy careening crustaceans, jetting chains of salps, frilly comb jellies, long and thing comb jellies, some little squid that spun away like a dervish. It was a galaxy of wildly whirling life, so abundant and diverse and so little known. It was impossible not to reckon with the thought that this vibrant, microscopic world is here all the time, not just when the beam is lit. These reams of animals are eating, swimming reproducing, communicating, seeking, escaping, surviving. Always. I became at once ashamed of how poorly versed we are in our ocean’s bounty and in awe of the gift it is to share the planet with so much unimaginable life.