Greetings!
This year marks the completion of the first census of life in the ocean, the Census of Marine Life ( COML). OGL has been involved in this project through expeditions on Australia's coral reefs. Later this month, OGL's Abigail Fusaro will travel to Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef to participate in our fourth Australian trip with COML. Keep an eye out for her trip updates throughout the coming month - and take a look at logs from previous Australia expeditions on our Facebook and Twitter pages!  
(**Not on Facebook or Twitter? You don't have to have a login to see our updates)
Please read on to see what we've been up to, and how you can help us continue to accomplish our mission.
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Cataloging Australia's Reef Biodiversity
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Whale shark on Ningaloo Reef!  | OGL scientist Abby Fusaro could hardly believe her eyes as the 15-foot whale shark silently glided by. Abby was snorkeling on Ningaloo Reef as part of the Australian node of the Census of Coral Reef Ecosystems (CReefs). She first traveled to Ningaloo Reef in 2009, where she met a scientific team of 29 people, led by Julian Caley and Shawn Smith of
the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The team included taxonomists, divers,
coxswains, journalists, photographers, and a cook. Since then, Abby
has revisited Ningaloo and journeyed to Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef with colleagues from 17 museums and
universities around the world. This month, she returns for her fourth trip to
Australia--this time to Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef.
Abby with specimens in the Ningaloo sheep shearing station  | The Australian node of CReefs is a collection of threes: three-week biodiversity surveys of three distinct Australian reefs, each visited over the course of three years. Ningaloo Reef is a near shore fringing reef ecosystem in Western Australia, uniquely isolated from the pressures of coastal development. In fact, Ningaloo is so remote that CReefs scientists had to fashion a temporary field laboratory from a seasonal sheep shearing station! The other two field sites, Heron Island and Lizard Island, represent the southern and northern extents of the Great Barrier Reef and offer unique landscapes: Heron is a sandy coral cay, and Lizard is a craggy, volcanic island.
Abby returned from her trips with over 3500 samples, representing
organisms ranging from algae to zoanthids, collected and identified by
an international team of world-class experts. These specimens, along
with others she will collect this month, are destined for DNA
extraction, archival, and distribution through OGL's Ocean Genome
Resource. In collaboration with the International Barcode of Life
(iBOL), the samples will also be "fingerprinted" by DNA barcoding so
that scientists can easily identify these reef species in the future.
Moorish idol, a fish related to "Gill" in Finding Nemo  | Sea hare, a shell-less snail, on the Great Barrier Reef  |
Through projects like this, OGL is helping to archive and catalog the enormous biodiversity of the sea.
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| Coming Soon... | |
Did you know we have corals in New England?
Coral colonies in Rhode Island  | Stay tuned for our newsletter next month, when we'll tell you more about the unusual corals that reside right here in New England! OGL's Koty Sharp is collaborating with researchers from the New England Aquarium to learn more about the ecology of these fascinating animals.
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