A week or two ago, after I returned from Norway, a group of friends and I went on a fishing and snorkeling trip in the Red Sea.  Over the past years, the six of us have become quite close, though, soon our life's paths will take us in different directions.  You see, our time in Saudi Arabia has come to an end.  The last four years has been an adventure.  And as with any adventure, there is fun and there is struggle.  But, the times that I will remember the most are those great pursuits that we shared with friends, and those times that we helped each other through struggles.  Together we explored the deserts of Arabia, we camped with camels, hiked in the heat, explored some ruins, and even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.  We shared many a barbecue dinner and fried fishes, and even dark sweet cheese.  We went running on Mondays and lunched together most everyday.  When one of a pair went out of town, we fought the loneliness together, we checked in on each other.  Its not so entirely easy to make good friends when you are an adult.  I feel fortunate that I met and got to know these fine folks and I'm glad that we shared a final day out at sea together.

I said that we were looking for sex on the reef, and that is the truth of it.  Just before sunset we would pack up our gear, grab whatever food was left in the fridge, charge up the camera batteries and head out to sea.  For ten nights and over twenty hours in the water, we swam up and down the same reef, one group at 20m below the surface, one at 15m, and one at 5m.  We searched the complex calcium carbonate conglomerate for evidence of action.  We became stalkers of the creepiest variety.

But while we were searching for sex, its not exactly what you might think.  We weren't seeking the internal, direct, gonochoric variety often favored by Homo sapiens,  no, we were looking for broadcast spawning.  Since sessile marine invertebrates can't very easily walk around town to find a partner, they often just bundled up their gametes and toss them out into the water.  Kinky, right?  Think about what you might be swimming in the next time you go to the beach.

If you are really going to study and organism in depth, at least from a biological point of view, you often need to know something about it's reproduction.  So, knowing that many reef organisms time their spawning with the warming of the sea in spring and also with the lunar cycle, we combed the reef for five nights before the full moon and five nights after the full moon in April.  And while I was sad that there was no conclusive spongey-business going on, we did see a whole slew of anemone weirdness, quite a bit of sea star and sea urchin sex, and the elusive and impressive coral spawn.  

Awesome photo below comes from Remy, aka, chief anemone creeper.

sea urchin spawning!

coral setting right before spawning!!

coral spawning, see the tiny round bundles flying up?

What happens in water after the sun goes down?  All the freaks come out to play.

Squishy, slimy, tentacled invertebrates that would make such a nice lunch for some nasty boney fish, take advantage of the cover of darkness to send out their polyps and scamper about while avoiding predators.  Without sunlight, there is no sense in photosynthesizing, they have to get more creative in their feeding.  To eat and not be eaten, that is the MO of nature.  So, dear spineless creatures, slither about, roll your googly eyes at me, and by all means catch some plankton, for the night is short and the day brings terrors.

silly crab has decided to carry a bunch of anemones on his back, must be why he's so grumpy

a worm so flat he floats away

teeny, tiny cup corals, so very cute

cucumbers with faces only a mother could love

giant slugs!!!

same cuttlefish, different color... I wish I could change colors

googlyist-eyed of them all, first prize goes to Mr. Flatfish

These photos come from a recent night-diving expedition that I was on.  For ten nights, two other ladies and I along with countless eager volunteers took to the dark, chilly, night-time waters in search of sex.  More on that to come...

Video credits and several of the photo credits go out to Remy and Pablo.

And speaking of water, if you look very closely at water, even salty, hot, nutrient poor Red Sea water, you will find a lot of creatures living there.  Copepods, chaetognaths, krill, jellies, polychaetes, gastropods, even fishes.  Life abounds.

Recently, for one of my classes we went out on the big boat to learn about pelagic ecology and the critters that live in the open water.  I was quite surprised to see that in just a little bit of water, there are quite a few things.

for some reason everyone wants to save the baby fishes but no one cares about killing 1 million other invertebrates

to sample tiny things, you need a very big net

to fix big nets, you need big Norwegians :)

I thought I would share some final images from last month's cruise.  Most of these photos (including the great one above) come from the ever-patient Lu Sun.  The videos come from Remy and her persistent and indestructible GoPro.

I know its all pretty much old news now as time has passed, life has gone on, and new stories are waiting to be told.  But that is ok with me.  My pace might be a bit slower than what could be achieved with other forms of social media, or certainly someone with a cell phone (damn thing has gone missing again), but I'm just not a fast moving kinda gal (see me running and you'll know).  I like to take my time to think about what I'm putting out there, even if that means I have to compromise some communication.  Maybe I'm just being stubborn, but I hope you all don't mind and stop by and visit every once in a while.

Thanks guys for a good trip!!!