So What Was Chris doing instead of blogging last week?

1. First...I was helping Dr. Margo Edwards at the Hawaii Mapping Research Group identify brisingid starfishes for a project involving high school students mapping these neat animals south of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Here we have (above) a cluster that Margo calls "Mother Brisinga"... (although, this may or may not be Brisinga..)


2. Second..Helping my colleagues at the New England Aquarium on their Expedition to the Phoenix Islands in the North Pacific to identify various echinoderms seen on their trip!! They are blogging their trip with many neat things to see (although not nearly as many invertebrates as I would like!)

For example...this little guy is Linckia multifora, a small fissiparous ophidiasterid. Widespread throughout the Indo-Pacific area..
This is another very common member of the Indo-Pacific echinoderm fauna..the sea urchin Echinometra, probably E. mathaei but species for this genus are difficult to tell from pictures..
and finally, what looks like Diadema to me..with species hard to call from a picture..
and finally 3. MOVING!!!
Nothing terribly dramatic..but I have been relocated to a new office just down the hall!!!
Similar to both of that Diadema (or that Echinometra) I had gotten pretty entrained in my office....
With LOTS of papers and stuffs to move!!
But the new office is worth it!
and thanks to Daniel Brown at Biochemical Soul for providing some of the new decor in my office!! (note that the poster also shows the phylogenetic relationships of the extant taxa!!) Keen! You can buy the poster from Zazzle..here!
A GREAT view of the National Museum of American History and the WA monument from my desk!
There will be more!! Now that things are getting back to normal.....