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!
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