28 Feb 2010

Day 59:
Today I finally found some motivation to get outside and take the 'real' camera out. Not sure why I have found it so difficult lately... I think the Olympics might have something to do with it though.  ;-) In keeping with what this year is about, I decided to visit some place new (to me) this afternoon so I drove over to Jennycliff after stopping in at the store for a few bits and pieces. Again, I can't believe that I have never been over here before... it really does make me wonder what I have been doing with my time in since I've been living in this city. Once parked up, I got out of the car and got bundled up as I knew that I would be here for awhile as I had specifically timed my visit to capture the sunset from the beach. After putting on the layers (as the wind was bitterly cold), I headed over to the green area across the road. I got the tripod out and got the camera set up for the right conditions and I turned around and saw a submarine heading into port being escorted by two tugs and another police boat.  WOW... I don't think I could get the lens changed fast enough!  What a treat to see that when I was even expecting to!


I highly recommend clicking on the photo to see the larger image so that the men standing on top of the sub become more distinct.

27 Feb 2010

Day 58:
A busy late night (and early Sunday) morning in the kitchen today baking treats for my upcoming field work this week. Yeah, I know know that I don't really need to go to all of this effort, but having homemade goodies when getting out of 7-8ºC seawater does take the edge off a bit. And it's always a good thing to keep the technicians who come out to help me happy!  :-) It's just a shame that this picture can't be scratch and sniff as the smells emanating from my kitchen today were AMAZING! Chocolate chip cookies, brownies and banana bread... plus, I made a curry for dinner!  Yum, yum, yum!!!

26 Feb 2010

Day 57: 
Looking down a compound microscope at a small section of one of my agar plates, this is what I saw....something I didn't want to see, a terrible fungal contamination that was present and spreading over nearly ever single cut piece of seagrass on all 25 culture plates. BOOO....! All this meant to me was that I would have to start the entire process over (which Ann and I did the previous day), in hopes of getting better results the next time around. However, late on Friday afternoon after disposing of these infected agar plates, I made the discovery that the refractometer (instrument used to measure water salinity) was calibrating incorrectly (even though I had used the 'zero' solution to calibrate) and what I thought had been 25 ppt (parts per thousand) seawater that I needed for the culture media, was in fact over 40 ppt.  BOLLOCKS!!!!  So, all of the plates that Ann and I worked so diligently at making the day before would have to be entirely redone AGAIN. Unfortunately due to everything that I have going on at the moment, that will have to wait until the end of next week since I will be out in the field Mon-Wed next week and then demonstrating out at Hannafore Beach (near Looe) on Thursday... I am going to be absolutely knackered!

25 Feb 2010

Day 56:
Now that most of my demonstrating is over (well, I do a have a few more sessions in March and the field course trip to Roscoff, France in April), it's time to start focusing fully on my own research. Currently my attention has been focused on microbiology and trying to grow Labyrinthula zosterae, a marine protist that causes wasting disease in Zostera marina, on agar culture plates. After an initial inspection on Monday I found that instead of L. zosterae cultures, I had lots of fungus growing instead (see 26 Feb). So, it meant that I would have to try my hand at it again and start a 2nd batch of culture plates with the hope that I would be able to grow the correct species. Ann and I worked diligently at improving our aseptic techniques and fingers crossed that it will pay off next week when I take a look at the plates to determine growth. These were just a few of the plates we made...

24 Feb 2010

Day 55:
Well, this was the last session of the marine invert practicals that I had been demonstrating on for the last 6 weeks. Time flies when you're having fun I suppose, but I tell ya... the hardest group of organisms to identified were saved for last... polychaete worms! Can you believe that this animal (Nereis virens) is a worm?!?  I mean, yeah, it has a body shaped like a worm, but check out those jaws on the end of its proboscis!!!  WOW!  Normally you wouldn't ever see these strong chitonous jaws unless it was in the process of capturing prey when it will evert its proboscis. Fortunately for us, this one died with them on display for all the students to see!

Oh, and if this thing were to bite you, yes, it would DEFINITELY hurt!

23 Feb 2010

Day 54:
Piero is an Italian RCUK research fellow who will become University of Plymouth faculty when his 5 year fellowship is complete. He usually arrives early in the mornings and lately has been wheeling a small bicycle and matching pink helmet into his office. Is this really how he has been getting to work???  

22 Feb 2010

Day 53:
So today was the start of the last week of Marine Invert Taxonomy and today's session was ALL about marine polychaete worms. Identifying some of them is incredibly difficult and you need a large helping of patience to get through it. The worms above can be extremely small with about 20-25 fitting comfortably in the area the size of my pinky fingernail! These ones, however, were on a piece of Fucus seaweed. They are supposedly the calcareous tubeworm Spirorbis spirorbis, but the only way to know that for certain is to kill them and extract the worm out of its tube to look at its body features. I was more interested in watching their feeding behaviour under a microscope rather than inflicting death upon a really cool critter!

21 Feb 2010

Day 52:
Today's weather wasn't nearly as nice as yesterday, but it wasn't too bad on the whole... and at least it wasn't raining. I decided to take a trip over to Royal William Yard (RWY) in Stonehouse (not all that far from where I live) to have a proper wander round. Although I have been to RWY before, I never explored as much as I would have liked to and so today was all about correcting that.  :-) RWY, covering 16 acres along the Plymouth waterfront, was built in the early 1800's under the rule of King George the IV and was later turned into a Victualling Yard in the 1830's (a complex of buildings with the purpose of providing and storing food and drink supplies, especially for the navy). For more info about Royal William Yard, check out this website: http://www.plymouthdata.info/RoyalWilliamYard.htm. In a few years time (or less!), I imagine this will really be a bustling part of town as restaurants and bars settle in to their new digs.

20 Feb 2010

Day 51:
Although the weather was lovely (big puffy white clouds set against a brilliant blue sky), I never left the house today. Instead, I used the day to do a bit of cleaning (mostly laundry), watch the Olympics and even watch a couple of movies that I haven't had time to watch for the past 2 months. It's sooo nice to have what I call a 'dump day' every once in awhile. Yes, I did keep longing to be outdoors, but the films were great (The Fall [that had AMAZING cinematography] and Coco Before Chanel), the Olympics were FAB (fantastic women's freestyle aerials) and dinner was good (Thai Lemon Chicken soup). I was also reminded that it had been a week since my birthday by all of my birthday cards on the living room window sill.... So, to all of you that wished me happy birthday and sent or gave me cards, THANK YOU once more for making me feel so special!

19 Feb 2010

Day 50:
With a fair number of my friends out of town for a conference in the US, I was happy to have the luxury of heading home after uni to make some dinner and then sit and catch up on all of the Winter Olympics action. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the Winter Olympics and had originally planned on being in Vancouver for them to celebrate my birthday, but alas, plans changed and then fell through entirely so I am stuck watching them on the BBC. Coverage in the UK is very different to the US and it has been an interesting experience seeing them from a different country's perspective. However, it must be said that the BBC has been annoying me to death by mostly only showing curling matches during my waking hours with all of the good stuff on during the middle of the night.  :-S  So, this has meant trying to catch up on the sports that I am interested in via the BBC iPlayer on the computer. Now that doesn't sound too bad in itself, but there's no way to know where the sport is that you want to watch in the 6+ hours of coverage per day so it means a lot of skipping around to try and find the right bits. Snowboarding is one of my favourite events to watch and when you have a champion like Shaun White (go Team USA) winning the men's halfpipe, that is some seriously exciting stuff and DEFINITELY worth staying up late for!!

18 Feb 2010

Day 49:
The weather forecast was GRIM for today, especially the first half of the day and so it was just my luck that today was a day I was scheduled to demonstrate on a 2nd year field day. I was less than looking forward to standing around outside in the heavy rain for 4 hours, but nonetheless packed my lunch and got my field gear together. After getting down to The Hoe (Plymouth seafront) and getting all geared up, the weather turned out to be ok for the most part with some spitting rain followed by rays of sunshine beaming through the cloud cover. Just to the east of where the students were working, men were working to dismantle the diving platforms due to the number of injuries (and even a death or two) from kids jumping off them at low tide and hitting the rocks below even though it had been that have been part of the Plymouth seafront for YEARS. The boat was the men's support boat taking the pieces of cut metal away from the site. The orange colour of the boat against the blues and greens of the water with the white of the gulls against the grey sky presented an amazing colour opportunity too good to pass up!

17 Feb 2010

Day 48:
Along with the 2nd session of the Marine Invertebrate Taxonomy practical, it was my mate Maria's 30th birthday today, so yet another monumental birthday for someone on the 6th floor.  :-)  Glad I haven't been the only one seeing in a new decade! And, in proper MBERC fashion, drinks were had in The Nowhere after work as a bit of a birthday celebration. The real celebrating will commence after she returns from the US when she's planned a 1930's themed evening at a cocktail bar near uni. Although Maria turned 30 today, who says we ever have to grow up???

16 Feb 2010

Day 47:
This weeks Marine Invertebrate Taxonomy practical was all about crustaceans...everything from crabs, prawns and barnacles. It so far has been the week that the students have been most interested in learning about the organisms. The crab above, Liocarcinus puber, aka the velvet swimming crab or devil crab (because of its red eyes) is a vicious crab and will quite readily attack you despite it being a vegetarian. While doing the HSE Professional Diving course in 2007 I saw a fair number of these crabs hanging out in rock crevices, but I was never actually lucky enough to see one 'swimming' in the water column. Maybe one day...

15 Feb 2010

Day 46:
Monday, Monday... yes, I am truly wondering where time goes! After such a lovely birthday weekend it was back to uni to start culturing. Easing in to the day, I finally made it in to uni around 11am, but all that meant was that I was going to have to try and squeeze in a whole lot of work into less time. Finally getting it together, I visited the microbiologists on the 3rd floor to make up my agar, and later, after autoclaving, pour my plates. That is what I had hoped to take a photo of, but unfortunately I forgot to bring the camera down with me. However, while my agar was autoclaving, I had to do yet another seawater change in my tanks in the CT room. The water is bitter cold (about 9ºC) and after dunking my hand and arm in a couple of tanks, they are on fire from the cold! Funny though... I did notice that while working in one of the tanks my hand accumulated loads of air bubbles, partly due to the air stone in the tank, but I think it may also be party due to air trapped around my hair folicles. Needless to say I thought that it was pretty cool and it helped to take my mind off of the pain!

14 Feb 2010

Day 45:
Rie and I spent the Valentine's Day on Dartmoor, completing one of the walks in a book I had received for my birthday (from Ann), but inspired by one of the photos in another book I had received the week before for my birthday as well (a book titled, "Megaliths" from Biff). Although the clouds initially clung to the sky and the wind was very chilly, as the afternoon progressed the clouds disappeared and we were left with blue skies and sunshine... the most PERFECT walking weather! As we neared the end of our 5.5 mile walk, we finally arrived at the Merrivale standing stone rows in addition to other standing stones and a burial chamber. What a spectacular place... a place where you can spend a lot of time walking the rows and pondering their significance. After living in Plymouth for the past 3.5 years, this is only the 2nd set of standing stones (or Megaliths) that I have seen in the surrounding area. There are MANY, MANY more in Devon and Cornwall and I plan to get to as many of them as I can this year. Truly incredible stuff laid out in prehistoric times...


For more information about the area, check out: http://people.bath.ac.uk/prsrlp/kernunos/england/merrivsr.htm

13 Feb 2010

Day 44:
Today was my 40th birthday... yes, I certainly can't believe it either! To celebrate in style, and to feel like a girl, I planned an evening out in Exeter to take in a burlesque show, dancing and dining with some very dear old friends (pictured above) as well as with some equally as lovely new friends. Although the evening wasn't entirely smooth sailing (due to our main course taking 1.5 hours to reach our table and yet we were THE FIRST to order), the rest of the night was FAB! Definitely a great way to see in the next decade of my life... in style having fun! All birthdays should be as good as this one just past!

12 Feb 2010

Day 43:
Although this night was about me celebrating my birthday early, sometimes it's really about all of the crazy people that I know that make me laugh, like these two (L: Giovanni; R: Nicolas). I know that it must seem like we live at The Nowhere, but we don't really... it's just our 'local' for uni. It's a great little pub and there have been so many fun, and funny, nights out there. Let's hope that the good times continue, eh??

11 Feb 2010

Day 42:
Demonstrating again on the Threatened Aquatic Ecosystems module, today was all about identifying and counting the organisms that were collected from the River Plym up on Dartmoor at Cadover Bridge last week. There were LOTS and LOTS of beasties to identify (and some of them were absolute buggers to key out), but after looking over the shoulder's of  several groups, I finally found the critter that I was most interested in taking a closer look at under the microscope. Do you know what it is??? It's in its nymph stage and as an adult it still has a long body, long legs and fully developed wings and are normally beautifully coloured. Give up? It's a damselfly nymph (think the smaller version of a dragonfly) which develops entirely in fast running water before metamorphosing into a beautiful short-lived damselfly that flies above the water hanging out in the fringing vegetation looking for its next meal. It's not only signets (baby swans) that go through an ugly duckling phase before turning into beautiful creatures, but also soooo many of the brightly coloured and wonderful insects that we take for granted. So, next time you're outside, get down in the dirt, overturn some rocks in a stream and have a nosy... you just might find tomorrow's beauty in the most unlikeliest of places!

10 Feb 2010

Day 41:
Today I was supposed to be out SCUBA diving on a SeaSearch dive, but since I still have this f***ing cough, breathing in a bunch of dry air underwater is probably not the best idea so I decided to give it a miss. However, today was water change day for my seagrass and seaweed that I am keeping in the CT (constant temperature) room and on one of the lab benches was the remnants of a fan mussel (Atrina pectinata) that we found out at Salcombe when out there early last week. Since I had just emailed Nigel, the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Estuaries Officer, about having it, I figured I had better document it before possibly having to hand it off to him. As you can see from its size, it is quite large, but nowhere near the size that fan mussel's can reach in the Mediterranean Sea, but HUGE compared to the mussels that most people in the UK and US eat (completely different species, but just to give you an idea...). The bottom photo illustrates that even after death life goes on as the inside of the shell was completely colonised by calcareous tube worms. Life in the intertidal never ceases to amaze...


More info about UK Fan Mussels: 
http://www.marlin.ac.uk/speciesinformation.php?speciesID=2680#

9 Feb 2010

Day 40:

Today was the 2nd session of the Marine Invert Taxonomy module looking at sea urchins, sea stars, tunicates (sea squirts), anemones and some lovely Tubularia hydroids. Have you ever really looked at a sea urchin in close-up detail??? Keeping the camera close to hand, I had a look at one of the live urchins under the microscope and WOW... what an amazing creature! Without a real 'brain', the urchin not only controls its spines and tube feet (just like sea stars), but also its pedicellariae (small jaw-like appendages on stalks used for attaching camouflage, cleaning and moving food around the outside of its body to its mouth). If you look closely you can see them in the photo. They almost look like carnivorous tulips mixed in and amongst the purple-tipped spines. Tube feet (the red-ringed disc-like structures) cover their entire body and not only are used for movement, but also form the basis of the echinoderm (spiny skin) hydrostatic (water pressure) skeleton. Healthy urchins can 'right' themselves when turned upside down in 60-90 seconds, which is pretty damn quick given the amount of coordination necessary in a brainless critter!

8 Feb 2010

Day 39:
For those of you that have wondered what it is that I actually work on for my PhD research, well, here's the species, Zostera marina, in all of its glory! Yep, it's a marine plant, but beautiful, eh? Just imagine a whole meadow of these shoots in the deep intertidal/shallow subtidal gently swaying in the current as the sunlight filters through the water. It can be very hypnotic and peaceful. These shoots will not get to live their life out in peace however. Instead, they will be chopped into bits used to hopefully culture Labyrinthula zosterae, a marine protist/slime mould that is causing all of the black/necrotic regions to appear on the seagrass blades, i.e. wasting disease. By culturing this species on agar (a gelatinous substance derived from seaweed), I am hoping to see if there is a positive benefit of Sargassum muticum (invasive alga from Asia) presence to the seagrass. I've never done any agar culturing before so this will all be a great learning experience for me and definitely more to add to my CV. :-)

7 Feb 2010

Day 38:
To celebrate my upcoming 40th birthday, there were many grand plans discussed about how to see in this monumental birthday, beginning with attending the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics with Kevi, then there was a possible trip to Peru and trek to Machu Pichu and lastly, a trip to Socotra, a Yemeni island out in the Indian Ocean off the Horn of Africa. For various reasons, all trips and their plans fell through, which is a shame, but in reality, it's all just as well that they did due to unexpected events (no snow in Vancouver, the 100th anniversary of Machu Pichu's rediscovery and the closure of the British and US Embassies due to political unrest). The last of these grand plans that involved the trip to Socotra was postponed (hopefully to when I finish my PhD) because Rie was finally able to get back on the property ladder and ended up buying a flat. Now, property buying in the UK is anything but simple and straight-forward, so what was started in early November didn't really come to a conclusion until practically the end of January (and that is considered QUICK). On Sunday, I got to visit Rie's flat for the first time and it was lovely. She still has a lot of work that she wants to do on the place, but LOVES her new kitchen and is really excited about having a real place to do some cooking, baking, canning and wine-making! I'm excited for her and really can't wait to try out her delectable delights the next time I'm in town.  ;-)

6 Feb 2010

Day 37:
Ah, the Aquarian LoveFest II had finally arrived! Although still feeling less than 100% I was rather excited to be seeing so many people that evening. Although not all of my dearest friends could make it, there was still a fantastic turnout with lots and lots of laughter. Fortunately I wasn't on my own celebrating turning 40 this year as my friend Bill (aka Weejie) will turn 40 two days before I do (whew!), but my friend Aideen (Bill's better half) is still a spring chicken in comparison (38). With any luck, this will be a yearly tradition that will continue to grow in size as I seem to have more Aqaurians friends than any other zodiac sign!

5 Feb 2010

Day 36:

It looks like today is again a 2-for-1 photo day. Still sick, I travelled up to London on Friday for the Aqaurian LoveFest II weekend to spend some time with good friends, celebrating the fact that we were all turning a year older in February. I wasn't really in the mood for travelling to London as I thought that the cough was going to kill me yet and the mucus machine hadn't quite stopped. However, when you see scenes like this from the train, it's hard not to appreciate what a special train journey this is between Newton Abbot and Exeter, no matter how crappy you feel. The top photo was taken as the train travelled along the River Teign and the bottom photo was along the South Devon coast between Teignmouth and Dawlish. This whole section of rail line was an engineering feat undertaken by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (the same one who built the rail bridge across the Tamar River -- see 24 Jan 2010 entry) in the mid-1800's. It is quite the experience to travel on this section of rail line at high tide during a storm. I've been on trains where the sea is crashing up against the sea wall and up and over the passing trains, which is just a little disconcerting. Fortunately, Friday was not one of those days despite the approaching storm from the Atlantic.


For more info about the rail line, check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Devon_Railway_sea_wall

4 Feb 2010

Day 35:
I absolutely felt like a pile of poo today and have been feeling that bad for a few days now so have been carting a medicine cabinets worth of cold medication around with me. Unfortunately, I had to go in to uni as I was scheduled to demonstrate for squid (Loligo vulgaris) dissection practicals for 2nd year undergrads, but wow... I probably shouldn't have gone in as it wasn't good for me and probably even worse for the students...  However, by some miracle, I managed to get through nearly 6 hours of teaching and hopefully helped some students learn about how cool squids are, despite them only being invertebrate molluscs! With more advanced eyes than humans, jet propulsion, tentacles to capture their prey and a beak (yep, more or less like a bird), what's NOT to like about these sea creatures?!?! Oh, and after dissecting the animals, there wasn't one that wasn't taken home and eaten for dinner by the students!

3 Feb 2010

Day 34:
When it rains, it pours! Demonstrating for the marine and ecology courses always seems to come at once and this year is no different. Today I found myself out on Dartmoor near Cadover Bridge working with 2nd year undergrads in the Threatened Aquatic Ecosystems module. The forecast was less than good, but fortunately for all of us, the rain held off until right at the very end as we were getting on the coaches to head back to uni. The students got to explore the joys of kick sampling, getting a bit wet (or a lot wet in some cases) and collecting some interesting freshwater invertebrates. I even got to see my first few dragonfly nymphs and their jaws are the most incredible things I've seen in a long time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_nymph). When looking at all of these different types of inverts, it's so easy to see where the movie industry gets its ideas for aliens and outer space creatures. Overall, it was a great day out, despite feeling like crap. In fact, I think that the fresh air might have done me some good... only to be undone when walking back on to the stuffy, overheated 6th floor.  UGH...

2 Feb 2010

Day 33:
Yet again, another day was spent demonstrating for Marine Invertebrate Taxonomy course and yet again, there were more amazing marine organisms for the students to identify. These chitons, although not British in origin (they're from somewhere in the tropics), we large specimens for the students to investigate amongst the many different types of molluscs on display. I wish that I had been feeling better during the practical to help enthuse the students about the demonstration material, but sometimes you just can't help how you feel. I'm hoping that next week I'll be back on track.

1 Feb 2010

Day 32:
Today I headed out to the field with 2 of the MBERC (Marine Biology & Ecology Research Centre) technicians. Fortunately for us, the sun was mostly shining (at least until near the end of my field work) and there were light winds, which makes a change from many of the times we have had to swim around in the sea at Salcombe. The only drawback today was the uber cold sea temperatures (about 8ºC). Talk about instant ice cream headache!!  It just makes your hands ache with pain and takes your breath away when you submerge your head in the water, but at least we have drysuits to mostly stay dry.