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. :-)
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