[Coral-List] FW: Montastraea spawn in Keys last night

[Szmant, Alina]

Forward of an email I got today,  I am in PR and we did not go out this month as our samples from last week were not ready.  But Caribbean corals tend to go earlier in the year the farther N we go.  If anyone else saw spawning this week it would be great to know.

Thanks,

Alina Szmant

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Dr. Alina M. Szmant
Professor of Marine Biology
Coral Reef Research Program, Center for Marine Science
University of North Carolina Wilmington
5600 Marvin K. Moss Lane
Wilmington NC 28409
Tel:  (910)962-2362; fax: (910)962-2410;  cell:  (910)200-3913
http://people.uncw.edu/szmanta
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From: Spencer Slate [spencerslate at captainslate.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 11:00 AM
To: Alina Szmant
Subject: FANTASTIC!

Alina, once again, year after year you hit it on the head, my Winston-Salem pal, we had a beautiful spawn last night, I mean one of the best I have seen, the seas were flat calm and the first star coral went at 11:19 pm and right next to that one the next one went at 11:23 pm and throughout the next 40 minutes until midnight we had at least 7 coral heads go that we captured on video and still shots....absolutely fantastic, you are out hero...and many were saying it was too early in August, bla, bla, bla, and I told them trust me Alina is always right, and you were, sure made believers out of a couple of locals who thought we were going to get stumped!  Thanks so much and we are heading back out tonight to the same spot, behind Dry Rocks and hope to see the rest of the corals spawn...Spencer