Will craft for science

My objective this summer is to assist in marking thousands of new coral recruits at different sites around the island of Moorea. But how do you mark corals, and with what? The person I’m working for came up with a unique scheme consisting of two colored beads and a letter. However, each one of these markers has to be designed by hand and for the most part is what I have been doing for the past few days. Five colors are combined in 24 different ways, and each sequence is given a meaning. Then, we repeat each individual combination with every letter of the alphabet. And then repeat all of the above for each of the 12 sites. Basically, the three of us will end up making and installing over 6,000 coral markers this summer. Soon, once the sites have been established in a way that can be easily relocated and quantified, we will begin to mark corals in a mad frenzy of measuring tape, colorful beads, and marine epoxy. More details to come once I get out of the lab and underwater!