Tessa Vekich

Current research contractor at the Smithsonian Marine Station in Fort Pierce, Florida with the CHAMP lab! Chemistry and coral husbandry! 🙂

[Tessa Vekich @TessaVekich]

Who’s hungry? 😀 This montastraea cavernosa (great star coral) definitely was! This is a up close feeding video to show how complex and amazing these animals are. This is your teaser for the next video with the Smithsonian Marine Station on YouTube! Don’t you want to see more 🤩

[Tessa Vekich @TessaVekich]

We’ve got some cute new friends in our coral tanks at the Smithsonian! In addition to these peppermint shrimp, our tanks have snails, hermit crabs and even some brittle stars that have hitched a ride in! They help keep our tanks waste free and the corals love the company! 🦐

[The Coral Health and Marine Probiotics Lab @PolypProtectors]

We are happy to announce that we have a few new #CHAMPions that have joined our lab! We are still social distancing, but are excited to work together just the same! WELCOME! Check out our spotlight series every Friday to meet our new CHAMPs! #CHAMPlabspotlightseries

[The Coral Health and Marine Probiotics Lab @PolypProtectors]

The iguanas are falling out of the trees down here in frigid Florida... But our corals are happily tucked in from the cold! We have a ton of heaters and tarps keeping us bundled up. 🥶❄️

[The Coral Health and Marine Probiotics Lab @PolypProtectors]

New diseased corals have arrived meaning we are BUSY. Everyone is on deck helping to cut, sample, and set coral fragments into experimental tanks. We aim to determine if temperature impacts the rate of disease progression. We also are testing out new putative probiotics!

[Jon Stewart @jonstewart]

Thanks for the warm welcome! I promise to only use this app in a sporadic and ineffective manner.

[Tessa Vekich @TessaVekich]

What did you do today? This was me:

[The Coral Health and Marine Probiotics Lab @PolypProtectors]

The tables have been filled to the brim with experiments these last few weeks. Don't worry @DrChrisKellogg, your corals fared well during the storm! We are keeping a close eye on them 🔎👀

[Chris @DrChrisKellogg]

Had a great few days at @SmithsonianSMS working with the @PolypProtectors to get a coral disease experiment set up that we hope will give us major insight into what is causing the disease. Now we wait for results (and hope tropical storm/hurricane Eta doesn't mess it up)

[The Coral Health and Marine Probiotics Lab @PolypProtectors]

1,000!

Excitement coming from the both the micro and coral lab! We have made it to 1,000 followers! Thank you for supporting us and checking out our work!

[A/Prof Zoe Richards @ZoeR_Coral]

Coral competition #NorthKimberley
📸 by @WildlifeMarine @Science_DBCA

[The Coral Health and Marine Probiotics Lab @PolypProtectors]

Along with our probiotic-loaded paste, we created a way to treat whole corals infected with #SCTLD! We place a weighted enclosure over the coral and fill it with probiotics. It sits over the coral for 2 h for colonization of the beneficial bacteria! Check out our sweet video! 🤩

[Tessa Vekich @TessaVekich]

Sand crane!! 🙂

[SmithsonianMarineStn @SmithsonianSMS]

It's here! The third episode in our @PolypProtectors Coral Health video series -- all about bacteria and stony coral tissue loss disease. Give it a watch! (#GoPerseverance!)

https://t.co/CxCBdS151Z

[The Coral Health and Marine Probiotics Lab @PolypProtectors]

Can you believe this day has come so soon?! Yes, we are all about to ugly cry in response Dr. Ushijima @VibrioSoup moving on to big things at UNCW! We are so proud of him and thankful he left such an amazing impact on us at the CHAMP lab. He's the biggest CHAMPion of us all!

[Tessa Vekich @TessaVekich]

Super exciting, Smithsonian marine station has a new video up my coworker and I got to take part in. Watch us bust some myths about corals!
https://t.co/LuplMQgHNZ

[UVI MMES @uvimmes]

War has been declared on USVI coral reefs… and it is called Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease! SCTLD is a fast-moving disease that creates lesions on the coral colony. This disease has the potential to kill entire reefs in a rapid period of time, sometimes in just a few weeks! ⁠

[Coral Morphologic @CoralMorph]

Mouth movements of a Homophyllia australis coral #coralmorphologic

[SmithsonianMarineStn @SmithsonianSMS]

Our marine educators have put together a variety of learning resources students of all ages -- check out our new Distance Learning page for content inspired by Florida's natural resources, and our scientists' work:

https://t.co/XFDJHuTWg5