IMBRSea Joint School - Adventures at the Swedish Coast

It all started after the pilot study in the field was completed, another alteration to the plans had to be made. The big blue box (read our great adventure of 680 red copepods….and friends) was taken out. It altered the sediment too much compared to the surrounding. It was basically doing too much of the purpose we had intended it to use. Decisions made, we set out to place our sorkcoresTM for the real deal! On our way to place our field experiment! Two excellent bearded boat drivers who took us to the location. All happy and back in the lab, doing our normal thing,  we were realising something became scarce, time. Bringing back the samples from the field. made us aware of the fact that we couldn’t distinguish meiofauna from detritus and sediment. Don’t know what we’re looking at but we are definitely busy with something! So a solution was created, the use of bengal rose stain was introduced. We were happy, for only a brief moment… an email from Tim in our inbox and the ...

Tjarnö Marine Station knows no off days. Hence, here we are, all six of us, ready to start another day of hard work right after breakfast. We are now pretty confident about the plan and set-up of our project; we have a sampling site, the wild and beautiful mudflat area off Indre Tenskör and Tjarnö. We have our model organism, an energetic and charismatic bright red copepod, believed to be Metis ignea. We’re also pretty pleased with our experimental design. Two parts : lab experiment and field (in-situ) experiment. The later one will give more depth to our investigation:  The response of meiofauna to tourism-induced pollutants will be studied on the community level. The team happy with our homemade Snorkcore™, ready for the field experiment! This part of the project will bring us once again on-board  and out in the field. We’ll use many plastic cores to evaluate the pollutants impacts on the meiobenthos. Four days have past since the beginning of our group project. W...

Our Romance with Meiofauna 6 students all with a love for the marine environment but maybe not such a love for meiofauna. Although we are students that are up for the challenge and we are just happy to be working in such a beautiful scenic marine station so we say “Bring on the Meiofauna”. Copepod from the superfamily Harpacticoidea viewed under the microscope (4x magnification) Meiofauna live in and on the sediment. They are small invertebrates that require a microscope to be examined. We want to know can they be used as a bioindicator for polluted waters. The team sit together for some brainstorming, we are all very polite with our suggestions. I don’t know if this is because we are patient people or because it is the first time we met each other. Being in an Erasmus international masters, it is likely that we are pass each other like ships at the night. Lets see if we are all so patient with each other at the end of this summer school. Various species of meiofauna, ma...