SOS! Surviving On Swedish island 3

SOS! Scrapers Of Sweden

Time to scrape the substrates! Get on the wetsuits (probably the hardest part), fins on and SPLASH! The sampling days have started and we already feel like part of the marine fauna… hours in the water collecting the samples from the substrates! In order to characterize the benthic communities growing on different substrate types (natural and artificial surfaces: natural rocky walls, concrete pontoons and plastic buoys) we are performing various snorkels in three different locations: 3 substrate types, 3 locations, 4 replicas, easy to say, hard to do and a nightmare for identification. All in the name of science, because knowing the species composition of each of the sites will allow us to understand the effect of the increasing amount of human made establishments in the marine environment. Do the benthic assemblages change in terms of structure and composition? Apart from the classic species identification, we will develop 3D models of the surface structure of the different materials to completely understand what is going on down there. Welcome to the 21st century! This will provide information of the rugosity, which may be a key factor for settlement of the community.

Thanks God our busy brains had a break from the fascinating world of the algae, we sang out loud:

https://scontent-arn2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/39536015_2099468230291921_5746951320502272000_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=9bc1f97a1a0ec93ccde1cfe627166b34&oe=5BFB5222

And the Grammy Award to the Best New Artist goes to… Our coordinator Tim Deprez! (Applause).

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IMBRSea Summer School embarks in Tjärnö

The International Master of Science in Marine Biological Resources (IMBRSea - www.imbrsea.eu ), this year organizes the first summer schools at the Tjärnö Marine Laboratory in Sweden. From 1 till 11 August 39 students and 10 teachers are working on seven challenging research projects. Follow the adventures of the seven research teams in the coming weeks via this blog!

Sampling Tjärnö Bay

Professor Karim and Lucy after our last deployment, hurray!! Our experiments are finally finished! We were able to deploy BRUV (see our Finding Fish in Tjärnö Bay post for a description :) ) at all of our sampling locations, plus a few bonus ones. We sampled three different habitat types: sandy, muddy/algae, and harbour areas. Map of Tjärnö Bay with our sampling locations At all of our habitats we sampled at a depth of approximately 1.5 meters to assess what animals are typically found in the littoral zone of Tjärnö Bay - the littoral zone is the region of the sea closest to the shoreline. On our final day of sampling we decided to do a few extra deployments at 10 meters to search for species we didn’t find at shallower depths. We’re working on analyzing all our video footage now - stay tuned for an upcoming creature feature post! Justin and Catie setting up the cameras for deployment Since BRUV uses bait to attract fish, we also conducted snorkeling transects at all of ou...

Goodbye my BRUVver, Goodbye my friend

Just a few hours are left of the summer school, the report is done, presentation complete, video shown (to mixed reviews…philistines). We’ve had an incredible time here in Sweden and have learned a lot, about fish, BRUV devices, and ourselves… One of the many beautiful sunsets of Tjärnö Surprisingly our experiments worked out well, we discovered that the most complex habitats did indeed have the most fish. They like structures and hiding places, but not as much as they like mussels…which is why we managed to actually see them on the video! We watched many clips like this screenshot to count so many fish Thank you for keeping up with Team eFISHency over the past 10 days! We’ve enjoyed every moment (well mostly…), and are really happy with our work! xoxo Gossip Pearl

IMBRSea Joint School - Adventures at the Swedish Coast

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