31 March 2010

Day 90:
Wednesday's are long days in the lab, starting with a water change and photosynthesis measurements for my seagrass. The clips attached to the seagrass blades are dark adapting a very small circle of blade tissue (for about 15 minutes) before the sensor is placed over the clips, the clip opened and the measurement taken. The higher the number (on a scale of 0-1), the better the overall health of the blade tissue. So far, after 3+ weeks in the lab, the shoots seem to mostly be holding their own and have more or less remained in the range of 0.8), despite the two different experimental treatments. Only one more measurement to take next week before the experiment ends and statistics begin....

30 March 2010

Day 89:
Well, on a very wild, wet and windy day, me, Tricky and Ann headed out to Salcombe to do my monthly seagrass sampling. Everyone was somewhat dreading being outside due to the weather forecast, but instead of persistent heavy rain, which is what was predicted, we found squally showers with 60mph southerly winds. Working on the south side of Woodville Rocks was definitely a challenge due wind funnelling straight up the estuary and we were glad when we moved to the north side of the rocky outcrop (what you see here in this photo). Still though, you can see how the wind was ripping around the rocks and the further north we moved, the stronger the wind became. Although the waves don't look very big here, they were big enough to nearly knock you over while standing or kneeling on the bottom.

29 March 2010

Day 88:
On the way in to uni, I made it a point to walk around the front of the Davy Building (where I work at the University of Plymouth) to capture a photo of the tulip tree that is in full flower at the moment. This has to be one of my most favourite flowering trees ever, but it makes me sad that the flowers are ephemeral (i.e. short-lived) and so their pink brilliance only is seen for about 1 week a year. It's a shame that the weather has been so shite lately as laying under the tree on the green grass looking up through the branches to a blue sky is such a colour treat for the eyes.

28 March 2010

Day 87:
Today was the first day of British Summer Time. It's funny, in the autumn/winter we're on GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time, so why it changes to BST is anyone's guess rather than sticking with GST. Weird, eh?


Anyway, one of the annual spring rituals is the flowering of the wild garlic that grows in the rock wall along the pavement by a small part near my house. Although I have never personally picked any to take home to use in my cooking, my mate Sarah used to collect it every spring and one time made a soup from it, topped with the white (edible) flowers. It was delicious! Maybe this year I'll have a go at using some...


For those that are interested in making Wild Garlic Soup, here's a recipe: http://foodfun.blog.co.uk/2007/03/31/cream_of_wild_garlic_soup~2009118/

27 March 2010

Day 86:
After a very late start to the day due to getting to sleep at nearly 4am the night before, I was going to be quite content spending the day at home taking care of things and just pottering around the house while trying to regain my wits after the previous day. And then I heard my phone go... I had received a text. It was my mate Emma (Ransome) asking if I wanted to go for a walk this afternoon either at Mt. Edgecumbe or Whitsand Bay. The pull of being outdoors and getting some fresh air was stronger than staying in, despite the threatening looking clouds moving overhead. Once the girls (Katie and Emma) finally found where I live, we picked up Tristin and his girlfriend Mirim and headed off to Mt. Edgecumbe. We never expected to find a woodland FULL of the MOST AMAZING daffodils in bloom, but my oh my, what a treat for the eyes!!  Simply stunning, especially as the light was filtering through the trees. If any of you are near some woodlands of your own in the UK, now is the time to go!!  In a few weeks this scene will change once again and instead of seeing the lovely yellows of the daffodils, the woodland floor will be carpeted in bluebells!

26 March 2010

Day 85:
After the most terrible day for a VERY LONG TIME, me, Kate, Claudia, Sabine and Nadja headed up to Exeter to catch Dan Donnelly's gig at the Old Firehouse (and meet up with Sarah and her friend Becks down visiting for the weekend). Before the gig, a few of us had dinner (mmmm... steak and ale pie!) before heading downstairs for the gig. Dan was a brilliant and funny as ever, which was a welcome turn of events considering how the rest of the day had gone. I guess the moral of the story is that no matter how bad things get or get you down, good live music is almost certainly a cure!

25 March 2010

Day 84:
To help build further social (and hopefully professional) ties to the Marine Biological Association, I am considered to be the student liason between MBERC (Marine Biology & Ecology Research Centre) at the university and the MBA. It was announced a few months ago that a Murder Mystery evening was being planned at the MBA to help raise funds for the Common Room. After sending out a few of my own announcements, I was able to get together a small team from MBERC (me, Emma, Andy, Giulio, Tricky and Sarah) to make a showing on the night. What I hadn't planned on is being in the cast until someone dropped out the day before and they needed someone to take the part. I volunteered to play Idmire M. Nees, a rags to riches showgirl, who turned out to be the abandoned daughter of the murdered cook. I hadn't had my thespian hat on since high school (and a bit with the Rain City Rugcutters performance dance team) and it was sooo much fun acting again and really getting into character. I think that I even surprised a few people with how well I did!  Brilliant fun indeed!

24 March 2010

Day 83:
After another late night home and in bed, I had a very long day in the CT room taking seagrass measurements (photosynthesis & growth), in addition to a water change. Fortunately, one of the undergrads I had worked with before got in touch and asked if I needed any help, which was a blessing in disguise. I still didn't finish until after 6pm, but hey, that was WAY better than the previous week.

So, you're probably wondering what on earth this HUGE beetle has to do with all of that by now. Well, nothing quite frankly! I didn't manage to take a photo on this day, so instead I am treating to one that I took that Friday while I was demonstrating for the final time on the terrestrial invertebrate course. This is from one of the collections put out for students to look at and it's one I found myself drawn to simply because of its size compared to most all of the others! Can you imagine finding this roaming around in your back garden??? That would be ACE!

23 March 2010

Day 82:
On a very rainy and soggy March day, I was off to see the 2nd of two New Model Army gigs I was doing on the final leg of the UK tour in Falmouth. This was going to be the 2nd to last gig for the boys after a very long 6 months or so on and off the road. They were all ready to go home and have a rest, but before they did, they still put on another great gig! In about 6 months from now, Justin (the lead singer) will have been doing this for 30 years and even after all of that time, he still is an incredible performer, as are the rest of the band  (Nelson, Marshall, Michael & Dean), making each gig an 'experience'. Even after following them for nearly 23 years, I still feel their magic.

22 March 2010

Day 81:
Literally just down the road from (& next to) my flat, I came across this very spring-like scene, unlike the weather I found in Roscoff. It's so wonderful that all of the flowers are starting to bloom, including the daffodils by the thousands!

21 March 2010

Day 80:
After a smooth crossing across the English Channel aboard the Pont-Aven ferry, the Plymouth breakwater came into view, as did the sun. I was wishing that the weather had been as nice the day before, but alas.... Instead, I got to have a pleasant afternoon at home taking a care of a few things around the house before the weekend was over.

20 March 2010

Day 79:
On the official first day of spring I arrived in Roscoff after a peaceful 6.5 hour sleep on the ferry across from Plymouth. Unfortunately, the weather was anything but spring-like. :-(  Ah well, I should be used to it by now I hear you say.  Guess I was hoping that visiting just that much further south would have meant more sun and warmth. However, with that part of France sticking straight out into the Atlantic Ocean without shelter from any large landmasses, the weather can be just as bad and changeable as in Plymouth! It didn't deter Anna and I though... we still managed to get out and visit the town and take a trip over to Ile de Batz,  a small island to the north of Roscoff that can be reached by a foot ferry. I hope that someday I get to see Roscoff under sunny skies. Can you imagine the colour of the water then if it is already tropical in appearance under grey clouds???

19 March 2010

Day 78:
So, after a very cold, wet and soggy day out demonstrating at Hannafore Beach, I rushed home, had a shower and tried to warm up a bit after being completely soaked again on my bike ride home. :-(  What a miserable day... However, to hopefully end the day on a positive note, I was headed to Roscoff, France for the weekend to see my mate Anna. I ran into my French downstairs neighbour and as it turned out, she too, was headed over to France for the weekend, taking the same exact ferries as me and so she offered me a lift to the port.  I was very happy about that as I wasn't really looking forward to dragging all of my stuff to the ferry terminal in the rain. So, once safely on board the ferry, rather than even thinking about sleeping in the 'reclining seats', I opted for a piece of floor in the lounge. This was my bed for the night. Yeah, it may not look great, but with an eye mask and sleeping meds it turned out to be just fine!

18 March 2010

Day 77:
Well, another quick check of my culture experiment still didn't show positive results. This particular plate wasn't showing growth of anything (unlike the one from the previous day). The dark spot, aka 'wasting disease', is what I am trying to culture, but so far... no luck. Pants!

17 March 2010

Day 76:
Yes, more microscopy time... it seems to be never ending these days! So again, this is a piece of seagrass from which I am trying to culture Labyrinthula zosterae, aka 'wasting disease'. Rather unfortunately what is growing on this particular cutting of seagrass is NOT L. zosterae. Instead, it is the same fungus with a mould thrown in for good measure (the slight greenish material) that appeared on my previous two attempts at culturing despite adding an anit-fungal agent. Crap, crap, crap....

16 March 2010

Day 75:
After my appointment with the arrhythmia specialist up at Derriford Hospital (Plymouth), I headed up to Bristol to do the first of two New Model Army gigs during the final UK leg of their 'Today is a Good Day' tour. After a quick stop off at Costco, I headed straight to the venue to meet up with Dawny Prawny to help her setup the merch stall. It was BLOODY FREEZING in the venue... yes, literally colder inside the venue than it was outside. Dawn had to make a trip out to the tour bus to get more layers to stay warm enough to work.

15 March 2010

Day 74:
While changing the seawater in my experimental tanks today, I came across this little creature, a brittle star, which was literally about as big as my ring finger fingernail (about the size of a dime or 5p piece)! Rather than send it down the drain, I left it in the bucket to hopefully live happily amongst the seagrass. Watching it move was mesmerising!

14 March 2010

Day 73:
Lambing season in the UK is a pretty big deal. In fact, this year the BBC decided to create a TV show called 'Lambing Live' hosted by Kate Humboldt where she spent a week on a British farm helping the farm deliver the lambs and look after the ones that had some problems. It's a pretty strange phenomenon as all of the ewes give birth during the same week (UK wide). On a walk with Jennie that was more 'urban' in nature than the true wilds that I normally escape to, we still came across plenty of fields fringing the greater Plymouth area full of baby lambs less than a week old. Most of the ones we saw were enjoying the lovely afternoon sunshine by napping with their twin, but a few more spry ones were out wandering about the fields, not straying too far from their mothers. However, there was a lamb in this particular field that had lost its mother and was baaaaing away trying to desperately find its way back to the milk source.

13 March 2010

Day 72:
What an awesome day today was!!! I picked up Jennie and we headed out to Fowey to meet up with some other peeps from the MBA for a walk from Fowey along the SW Coast Path over to Polkerris for a pub lunch before returning to Fowey overland through the farm fields. After parking the car at Readymoney and wandering down the beach to the toilets, we headed up to St. Catherine's Castle, built in 1542. From there, you have an excellent vantage point looking across to Dawn French and Lenny Henry's (yes, the two British comedians) house right on the cove. They just happened to be at home today and were sat out on the veranda enjoying the beautiful sun-shining morning. That is, until some people in the group started talking about them very loudly so they went back inside. :-( I guess there is always a price for fame.


As for the rest of the walk, it was LOVELY!!  Such a stunning coastline punctuated by the clearest water, sea birds, birds of prey, a HUGE day navigation marker on Gribbin Head (http://www.cornwalltour.co.uk/gribbin_head.html), Daphne du Maurier country (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_du_Maurier) and a pub lunch in Polkerris at the Rashleigh Inn, got the first half of the day started right. On the return we saw baby lambs (just born this week), black pigs, daffodils in bloom and some lovely farmland, all under mostly sunny skies (well, except toward the end when clouds moved in). It's hard to pick just one photo from today's walk, but this one pretty much sums up the natural beauty.

12 March 2010

Day 71:
Ah, Biology 1003... terrestrial invertebrates! Considering I haven't looked at, or really even thought about this group of organisms since last year, it made today quite challenging to get back up to speed. However, after a few hours (essentially the morning session), I was feeling a little more comfortable with helping the students. My favourite group of animals that were put out for the students to identify were of course, the butterflies! So many of the mounted specimens reminded me of so many of my coastal walks last spring and summer. Just seeing them made me even more excited for the arrival of spring and all of the glorious weather that will hopefully continue. Let's hope that the coldest winter in 30 some odd years won't hamper the flowers too much so that all of the bees and butterflies have something to eat when they arrive back on British shores.

11 March 2010

Day 70:
I needed a break from the lab and to breathe some fresh air, so today I took a stroll up to the MBA (Marine Biological Association) to buy tickets to the Murder Mystery night being held up there in 2 weeks as a fundraiser for the MBA Common Room. Fortunately, it was another sunny day in Plymouth and so it was very pleasant walk through town, despite numerous chavs out and about. The MBA is situated on The Hoe, which has many war memorials and the above is one of them. Although the angle at which this photo was taken makes it impossible to read the plaque on the front of the memorial, it says nothing about why the angel is trying to kill an eagle(?) with a knife and how that relates to the men lost at sea. Strange what some people think represents a tribute to the dead. The wall in the background with the cannons on top is part of the Royal Citadel, built in 1666, which partially surrounds the MBA.

10 March 2010

Day 69:
Today was the BIG day... it was time to start my next big CT (constant temperature) room experiment to hopefully validate the previous years findings. What this meant is spending 6+ hours in the CT room, minus a bit of time to defrost, setting up the experiment and getting the shoots prepared. There was a lot of sorting, cleaning, hole punching and measuring going on while making sure all of the tanks had fresh seawater to get the experiment underway. The CT room is not a bad place to spend time, I just wish that it was much warmer in there rather than the 8ºC that it is currently set at!

9 March 2010

Day 68:
After the first two tries at culturing Labyrinthula zosterae (i.e. what causes wasting disease in Zostera marina) being a flop, I am seriously hoping that the 3rd time is a charm! Agar culture media had just been poured into the Petri dishes above using aseptic microbiology techniques and I was waiting for it to set before putting small cut pieces of seagrass onto it to attempt to grow the ever elusive marine protist. In 5-7 days I will know if the process was a success... keep your fingers crossed!

8 March 2010

Day 67:
Seems like I've been spending a lot of time in the lab, getting up close and personal with my seagrass and so now here's your opportunity to do so as well!  :-)  These shoots are now prepped and ready for the start of experiment on Wednesday... Each of these shoots will need to be measured for growth (individual blades measured with a ruler) and have their photosynthetic capacity tested every week before being harvested in 4 weeks in order to delve into their biochemistry, i.e. their tannin content. It does seem sad to always be a plant killer, but if it means that I get to find out something cool in science that will increase our understanding of seagrass ecosystems and their vulnerability to invasive species, then I guess it's all worth it in the end.

7 March 2010

Day 66:
As a more spur of the moment plan, I decided that I had to get out of the house again today and do more coastal walking. Jennie also came along as she too can live spontaneously.  :-) We headed to the South Devon coast this time, walking from Bolberry Down out to Bolt Tail, then down to Inner and Outer Hope where we had a hot chocolate and some crisps in the Hope and Anchor Pub before heading across the fields and country lanes back to Bolberry Down. It was a gloriously sunny day with plenty of blue sky, but my oh my, the wind was STRONG and cold!  However, it didn't matter... it was just so nice to be outside getting some fresh air and tackling more of the SW Coast Path... I swear I am on a mission this year to complete even more of this path this all of the previous years combined! So far, I have gotten the year off right!

6 March 2010

Day 65:
Over halfway along our walk, Jennie and I decided to skirt around the bottom of Cambeak, near Crackington Haven, essentially following a goat track around (more or less). However, there came a point when we still had another cliff ahead, but no way around it to the other side, or the beach below. Jennie thought about scrambling down to the bottom from the precipice between the two cliffs (looking at it from the other side, that would have been a VERY BAD idea), but thought better of it in the end, so she was brave enough to walk up and along the ridge line of the cliff she is standing on top of... yes, I'm talking about the bit that is closest to the left cliff face. Once she showed me that she was safely on top (i.e. this photo), I had to make the same journey up, but had a bit of the 'fear' about the possibility of falling... it seemed a long and bumpy way down...

5 March 2010

Day 64:
Well, Friday I didn't get any of the camera's out once. It was just too manic at uni to even think about anything else than what I already had on my plate and photography was at the bottom of the list. However, I did plan this walk on Friday night so I'll use one of the lovely photos that I took while on a walk with Jennie along the SW Coast Path near Crackington Haven on Saturday. :-) That counts, right?


Although we had gone in search of sun, sun sun, we didn't exactly find that along the North Cornish coast. However, we did find something perhaps a bit more dramatic than blues skies and sunshine. After successfully getting off the precipice alive, we encountered this scene while looking south from Cambeak near Crackington Haven.

4 March 2010

Day 63:
As the majority of my demonstrating draws to a close for this academic year, there are still a few days to be out on the shore with 1st or 2nd year students. Today was one of those days. :-)  After a couple of days earlier in the week spent out in Salcombe for my own field work, it was nice to be able to visit a rocky shore and just spend some time wandering around the beach, turning over rocks to see who was at home under glorious sunshine. The wind however, was a bit brisk to it was a day for several layers!


Although it wasn't under a rock, the dog fish/cat shark egg case was attached to some seaweed in the lower intertidal. I think that I found 3 or 4 of them in total as the tide came rushing back in...

3 March 2010

Day 62:

After all of my field work, there was also a lot of work to do in the lab, a lot of which involved scraping every side of every single blade of every single shoot of seagrass that I harvested for the experiment that I am due to start on March 8th. Thank god I had my ipod to get me through such a mind-numbingly boring task. Fingers crossed that I will get some good results at the end of March from all of this!

2 March 2010

Day 61:
Day two of sampling was another lovely day, although the wind had picked up a bit and the sunshine was more hazy. It was also the lowest tide of the year! Today's task was to complete all of my transects (counting seagrass shoots for density measures and counting the number of Sargassum plants along the transects to measure change over time). Once we had finished all of the work and before the tide came in, we saw a very interesting phenomenon. Most all of the razor clams (of which there were A LOT!), had 'jumped' out of their holes due to lack of oxygen (from the tide being out for so long) and were just lying all over the surface of the shore, old and young alike! I had never seen such a thing before and found it all really incredible! I had also never seen the foot of a razor clam (what you see sticking out the end in the photo) as it is tries to dig and put itself back in it's hole.  Wow... marine organisms are so totally cool!

1 March 2010

Day 60:
On the first day of 2010 sampling out at Salcombe, the sun decided to shine, feeling quite pleasant as there was only a very light breeze. In fact, I was even able to take my hoodie off for a bit to enjoy the spring-like temperatures and just have a T-shirt on before getting into my drysuit. Tricky, one of the MBERC technicians that regularly helps me in the field, decided to enjoy it by having a lie down while we waited for the tide to recede a bit further before getting my sampling underway.