A week in

Looks like my most recent blog didn't publish!

What I was supposed to tell you:

We have so far learned about sea sponges, sea fans, flatworms (Platyhelminthes, what a great name!), jellyfish, corals, sea gooseberries and other relatively simple but, in my opinion, very interesting organisms.

I found in the news a couple of days ago what I believe is a brilliant article relevant to my course: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24398394 

Take a look to see the sorts of things I've been learning about.

In other modules I've learned about hydrothermal vents (think of an underwater volcano, throwing out superheated water about 350 degrees Celsius and ions such as iron). These can give rise to some extremely weird deep-sea life forms such as eye-less prawns (instead they have a large light-sensing organ on their backs), snails with metal scales on their feet (the metal is secreted by the cells on their foot as a way of filtering out heavy metals that are present in large amounts in the water near hydrothermal vents), and "Yeti crabs". These crabs are one of my favourite deep-sea organisms; they have hairy arms that give them their nickname.

From top to bottom: deep-sea prawn, scaly snail, and Yeti crab. The prawn and the snail have yet to be named

We also took a trip out into the Solent on the University's smaller research vessel, the Callista, for a bit of a taster into working scientifically with boats. We measured, with a Secchi disk, how far the light penetrated the water (not very far. The maximum we got was 2m because it was cloudy and not very bright). We then measured the temperature and salinity using a CTD probe (C stands for conductivity. They use this instead of salinity for obvious reasons!).

By far the best part of the trip was the trawl. We dragged a small net along the Solent sea floor for a couple of minutes and brought up a crate full of sea weed, mud, and some interesting animals. Here's what we found:

Sea spiders

Swimming crab

Shore crab

Spider crab

Goby fish

Shrimp

We also found a whopper hermit crab, the only thing I managed to take a photograph of.

 Here's the crate of stuff

Here's the hermit crab. He wasn't very cooperative, and this was the most we saw of him unfortunately.

I have a practical tomorrow, and I'll take my camera along to that and take some photographs. The lecturer will be bringing in some specimens (dead and alive I think) of the Cnidaria phylum. This phylum contains Jellyfish, siphonophores (Portuguese man o' war. It's not a true jellyfish because it's a colony of polyps, not just one), sea anemones, corals, etc.

I'm really looking forward to the practical (mainly because I get to wear my own lab coat and use my own dissection kit!) and I just hope I remember my camera! 

See you all soon,

Lots of love xxx