You’ve got SNAIL MAIL!

Team picture: Together we are made up of myself Hayley Campbell, Aisling Brenan, Raquel Ruiz, Liam Wyns, Marina Ortega and Sara Knoblespieβ.

Tjärnö (Char-no) Island, is where our Swedish adventure begins. Our project is centred on a small rough periwinkle called Littorina saxitilis which has two known ecotypes here in Sweden, a wave ecotype (lives exposed to the waves) and a crab ecotype (lives on the rocks in the tidal zone). Our main focus of research over the next ten days will be the potential impacts of eminent anthropogenic pressures these little sea snails endure, in the Tjärnö Island area.

Our enthusiastic sea snail team spent the first day getting acquainted with our surroundings; hiking through the Island to the neighbouring more exposed Island of Saltö along with assessing the coast line via boat. Scoping out the area gave us a local perspective on the best potential sampling sites for our new snail mate. On our walk we gathered samples of a few snails and brought them back to the centre to familiarise ourselves with the identification of their species and separation into ecotype, as this can prove tricky!

The critical second day began with plenty of anxiety as our group discussed our project proposal. We brainstormed, studied the literature and bombarded our resident snail expert Kerstin and our helpful mentors Jens and Luca with plenty of questions. We continued to deliberate on which anthropogenic pressures would be most effective to test, creativity and innovation is a must with our project as we have little previous studies to base our experiments on. After many ideas being thrown on the table and removed again, we eventually decided to undertake two anthropogenic pressures found in Tjärnö Bay - light and plastic pollution.

Expect an updated snail mail in the next coming days!
old ben snail.jpg

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IMBRSea Joint School - Adventures at the Swedish Coast

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