Dear Coral-List,

I wrote last month about the opportunity to see live-streaming footage of a coral spawning event near Grand Cayman Island via an underwater camera system maintained by the student-based nonprofit Teens4Oceans, local dive center Ocean Frontiers, online marine education organization Ocean Classrooms, and imaging company Wild Goose Imaging. We only witnessed minimal spawning last month, and are happy to share with you that an Orbicella (Montastrea) annularis colony in our viewing area began spawning around 10:07 PM CST last night and we have captured the event on our camera. We had over 3,000 viewers on our website for the show and they spawned right on time!

It is likely the coral will spawn again tonight at 9:15pm-ish MST (10:15pm-ish local time in Grand Cayman), and you can view it along with us, live, at http://teens4oceans.org/index.php/cayman-islands-reef-monitoring-webcam/.

To see footage from last night’s spawning event, watch this video clip, with the action starting around 1:57 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-JUWueJ5M8&feature=youtu.be

Cheers,
Erin Sams

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