week 4: Sweet Movember
Either due to strong winds, poor visibility or sea ice cover (it’s a year with much sea ice in the bay), we were not able to reach our sampling station and collect water samples with all kinds of microorganisms. This left a bit of time to organise the diverse and numerous protocols we use, setting the incubation wheel with lights and sewing net jackets for our sample bottles to reduce light to in situ levels, among other things.
To cheer us up early in the morning we met with a visitor at our front door, a friendly elephant seal, saying hello with elaborated belches and burps. The seal seemed to like the smell coming from the STP (sewage treatment plant) and spent quite a while outside it.
By the end of the week, happily the full moon heard our urges and the weather cleared up so we went on board of Stella to collect seawater!
After quite some hand-winching to collect the water, we returned to the lab with enough seawater and some copepods (very small animals – zooplankton -, belonging to the crustaceans) from the net hauls ready to be processed and analysed. Zooplankton numbers seem very low at the moment, however, we still had enough to do to keep us very busy.
Besides handling the zooplankton, we measured directly upon return the photosynthetic capacity of the phytoplankton (thus the unicellular algae) with a PAM-fluorometer, took samples for inorganic and organic nutrients, filtered water for phytoplankton pigment and lipids analysis, preserved a water sample for light microscopy (to identify the larger algal species) and performed flow cytometry counts for the algal species smaller than 50 µm (equals 0.005 cm). We proceeded with a dilution technique to determine both grazing on phytoplankton by microzooplankton and viral lysis rates of phytoplankton. We also performed a viral production assay to estimate the rate of production of new bacterial viruses (bacteriophage). All this in the laboratory container that is kept as close as possible to the actual water temperature upon sampling, i.e. between 0 and 0.5?C!
To commemorate the end of Movember, a British tradition to grow a moustache over the month of November to raise money for prostate cancer charities, we had a barbeque at the boat shed. Not an ordinary one...but one with a back stage for concerts, disco ball, VIP area created by a huge couch made with four mattresses stuck together, a small open-air bar (a tractor bucket that had scooped up some snow with beers stuck in it. See photo), and a good atmosphere. Sweet Movember!
A competition took place for the best, bushiest and naturally the worst moustache among the participants. The winners received a huge moustache biscuit. Some concerts by three local bands followed up, where all sorts of musical instruments were played, saxophone, piano, drums, guitars etc and created rock or pop symphonies.
By now we hope that the weather gets more ‘summery’ to allow us to collect more often the crucial water samples to fuel our research down here.
