Photos

Bit belated, but I've been a little bit too busy/lazy to do this post lately!
Recently we did our first practical, which involved walking around the large lab, having a look at some dead (and live) specimens, and having a go at some biological drawing. Biological drawing is, in a way, easier than normal, artistic drawing, because it only requires features that help in the process of identifying the organism. The rules around how you draw the organism, however, are much more strict. For example, the brief guide we were given says that artistic shading is NEVER allowed.

I looked a bit weird dunking my camera into the anemone tank, but I managed to get some quite good photos in my opinion. I've also posted one of my biological drawings. There are a lot of photos, but I'll do my best to explain them!

 All these blue photos were taken from outside the tropical coral tank in the reception area, and it's a small exhibition of coral fluorescence under UV (which is why the tank looks blue)

 It took me quite a while to get a close up of the clownfish, as they moved quite quickly, and this is perhaps the best one. They look quite grumpy, which makes me a little more fond of them.

 By far my favourite photograph of all of the ones I took that day is this one. This is a young starfish, and it is only about 2-3mm across, which just shows you how good the macro setting can be now!

I got some strange looks taking these pictures, and someone even said "I do hope that's waterproof". Nevertheless, dunking an expensive camera into water is still unnerving.

This is a close up of a sponge. A lot of people know that bath sponges used to be made of actual sponges, but not many people know that to get them into a state so that you can use them, the fishermen had to beat the sponges on rocks to break up and wash out the spicules. More on spicules later.

This belongs to the phylum sipuncula. I Did a biological drawing of this, which I shall post here later

These are the spicules taken from a sponge. This photo was taken through a microscope eyepiece, which required patience and a steady hand! Spicules basically make up the skeleton of the sponge, though are not actually bones (which is why it's not an invertebrate). You don't want to use a sponge as a sponge if it still has its spicules, they're like shards of glass. Speaking of glass, spicules are usually made out calcium compounds, but in the rare deep sea sponges, they are silicates because calcium is dissolved much easier below 1500m. So deep sea sponges grow glass shards. How terrifying.

This is the "skeleton" of a sponge, with all its spicules in position. Below, you can see a close-up of this, but you still can't properly see the individual spicules. I love the pattern they make.

More spicules. As you can see, their shape varies quite a bit.

A close-up of coral. I do think their structure is really quite beautiful.

A "forest" of coral. This skeleton is what is left in bleached coral- when the surrounding water gets too hot for the coral, which then expels the beneficial algae (which gives coral their spectacular colours). The coral cannot live without the algae, so it dies, and its white skeleton is left.

This is an interesting story. This used to be feared by sailors because it resembled the bloated hands and feet of dead children (nice image). It's actually a sponge that grows on the shells of hermit crabs, and gradually dissolves their shell until it becomes their shell. This actual specimen had a large hermit crab in it once.

And here's the photo of said hermit crab, when it was alive!

This is a slice of Anemonia viridis, which is obviously an anemone. Below I have posted the sort of thing we were asked to do.

I quite like this one because of the blue bits, which to my understanding are part of the anemone's collar, retracted into bundles so the tentacles are out.

This is a close-up of the anemone's mouth. I'd never seen its mouth before, so this was particularly interesting. It didn't really do much aside wiggling the tentacle you see near its mouth.

I have yet to find out what this actually is. It's one of the strangest things I've seen in the reception tank, as each blobby thing looks like a lobster eye. The colours were amazing, too.

That's it for today, I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I have been told I have an invertebrates practical next week, too, so I'll bring my camera along to that too. The workload is slowly increasing, but I think I'm managing to keep on top of it. I enjoy the information in some lectures so much sometimes that we have discussions on the bus home while we wait for the freight train to cross.

I love it here, I feel like I am in my element! (But I am looking forward to coming home for Christmas. I miss my double bed). Anyway that's really it. I'll post sometime next week, as I've worked out the posting weekly works best for me. So long!

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

I'm here!

I've just finished unpacking my things and I'm beginning to settle down at last! My room is really quite nice now it has some Mir in it. The bed was really comfy last night (probably made more so by the walking around Southampton we did last night). Here's a picture of my room:

Not sure if you noticed the duct-taped shelves, but the original shelves I was given were tiny and practically useless, so Dad went to B&Q, bought a plank of wood and a saw, and chopped up two shelves in the car park, and now I have a lot more space! My room is shorter than some of the others in my flat, but I don't really mind because I'm not going to be here 24/7.

There are six of us in our flat; two marine biologists, a film studier, and accountant, and two other courses that I haven't found out yet. We played a couple of rounds of different card games, and discovering that whiteboard pen is semi-permanent on the fridge, we used one of the whiteboards that I brought to university. There's now a doodle of a can of Heinz baked beans in one corner of the fridge door, and the faint remains of our door code, because none of us could remember it.

I still haven't managed to sort out WiFi yet as the router still thinks it's supposed to be in Hanwell, so for now I can only have internet on my laptop via a cable, until I can sort it out. But it's not really a problem at the moment because I don't really need it during freshers week.

Yesterday, I found it really weird that I didn't have to worry about putting the chocolate brownies I had made on the kitchen side, because there's no longer a dog to steal them! (Or a cat- Marmite likes jumping up on to the counter at home and stealing food) I am looking forward to the Christmas holidays already (joking, I quite like it here. But I suppose I am looking forward to having a double bed again).

Also, here are some more photos from the waterproof camera I took the other day:

Essential equipment

As a lovely surprise from my parents, I got a waterproof camera yesterday, and most of this morning has been spent experimenting with it. I still don't 100% trust that I can submerge this piece of electrical equipment completely and it'll be fine, but it has taken several trips in to the fish tank, and it still works, so I should be OK.

I've now decided that is is the most ESSENTIAL piece of equipment for my course, and it will be joining me when my fellow marine biology/oceanography students and I go on our sea survival course! It will involve actually using the life rafts you only see on television- the ones that look like a floating tent. I'm probably going to have far too much fun, especially now I can record it.

Below are some of the results of playing with the camera this morning in the fish tank. I'm quite proud of the results, although it took a while for the fish to swim close enough and slow enough to get them on camera, let alone in focus!

It's quite clear that I will need a bit of practice, but I really enjoyed doing it, especially as my room needs tidying. I have one day left in London, and my room is still messy. Completely typical of me. I'm sure you'll all be amused to hear that Southampton fines you if your room isn't able to be cleaned by the cleaners (my dad was thrilled when he heard this).

Going back to the camera, I discovered it has a setting that allows me to take "miniature photos", an example of which I have posted below. It's my favourite type of photography, and I'll probably be exploring it as well as underwater in the coming weeks.

That's all for now, next time I post I will almost definitely be in Southampton.

See you all in the Christmas holidays,

Mir

Look what came in the post!

I have been suffering from a cold for a couple of days, and this morning, I did not feel great at all. Just when I thought I didn't have to get out of bed, and could sleep in a little longer, I heard someone knock at the door. It was the postman with a large, rectangular, heavy parcel, and I unwrapped it to find MY FIRST TEXT BOOK. It felt like Christmas. I suppose it may be a little odd dedicating a whole blog post to the experience of receiving your first university textbook, but I could not contain my excitement when I read the word INVERTEBRATES on the cover, decorated with a photo of a beautiful jellyfish.
Here's the front cover:

Just flicking through the complex diagrams makes me excited, and I love the beautiful drawings and sketches of some of the animals. Here's an example of one of the pages (it is upside down because I can't work out how to rotate the damn thing):

Squid are a particular favourite of mine, art-wise, because they have an extremely odd shape, and their eyes are proportionally huge. If you've ever seen them on an Attenborough program, you will have witnessed their immense grace when they swim effortlessly through the water. They are, in my opinion, stunning organisms.

One thing that surprises people is just how intelligent squid are. Humboldt squid especially are very inquisitive creatures, and will quite often swim up to divers and prod them with their tentacles. Some even steal things- I found a video of one stealing a camera lens from a diver's pocket!

Humboldt squid do have a bit of a bad reputation, unfortunately, because the suckers on their tentacles are lined with many, very sharp teeth, and where their tentacles meet their body sits a large, black beak. There are many horror stories from fishermen in the Sea of Cortez where their friends, or someone they have known, have fallen out of their boats, and large tentacles have grabbed them and pulled them under. But these stories are often exaggerations, and they do not often attack.

That's enough from me, for now. I'm awaiting the arrival of another textbook, which should come tomorrow. I will try and find the footage of the humboldt squid, because it's really quite cool!
Also, hopefully I won't be as ill, because it's not fun.
Bye!

5 things I wish I had known when I chose to go to university

Having had many stressful/frustrating moments since signing up to UCAS, I feel it is now my responsibiity to share to anyone who is even just considering applying to university the top most frustrating problems I had, and how to avoid/overcome them.

5. This one may be considered a bit contrary to what people are always told, but honestly I cannot imagine the trouble I would have had, had I not done it. When signing up to UCAS and university accommodation websites, etc, you will have to sign up to COUNTLESS things and be expected to remember not only passwords and usernames, but customer reference numbers and other security things. My contrary advice is to write it ALL down in one document, put it on the cloud (Dropbox or GoogleDrive) and, for the love of God name it something sensible. The thing is, the cloud is a relatively safe environment for things like that. It's not totally secure, but I feel the benefits of having your details somewhere outweigh the risks of your cloud account getting broken into. Don't write them down on paper because, if you're anything like me, you will almost definitely lose them.

4. This one applies to people who have had to change course AFTER they get their results. In my case, it happened because I was offered a place on another, similar course. The UCAS page, Track, where your offer is, will tell you you have a new offer, but will it let you accept it? No.There is not even a button or a helplink. My advice is, if this happens to you as it did to me, search through the UCAS website for a general phone number (I will post a link below) and call them. You will have to remember your security details, such as that reallyobscure question they asked months ago, and your date of birth, that sort of thing.

3. Just because a university is, almost by definition, a place that contains clever people who know what they are talking about, doesn't mean their website will be much help. Expect to find ID cards, accomodation, optional modules, phone numbers and email addresses completely hidden away in very obscure places or even with completely different links that you have to contact a second-year for. Honestly, I now feel like a fully fledged cyber-stalker. My tip- get a document on your computer, SAVE IT TO DROPBOX, and paste into it every single link you find that may be useful. Trust me, it will be your bible.

2. This one is ESSENTIAL. You may have been accepted in to the university, but you haven't finished yet. Oh, no. You have to apply for accomodation, ID card, sign up to your university's computer system, enrol online,  book your accommodation arrival time, buy text books, choose optional modules, the list feels endless. So write a list of EVERYTHING you have to do, and make damn well sure you cross each item off only when it has been fully completed. I kept forgetting everything I had to do, so this idea should really be second-nature!

1. This is, in my opinion, the most important thing. For me, it meant the difference between receiving an accommodation offer relatively pain-free and having to spend days in misery, trying to sort out private accommodation. And it also applies to anything that you sign up to or apply for or buy. When the confirmation screen comes up and says something along the lines of thank you for applying/ buying. Your customer reference number is 1234abc, keep this safe in case you need to contact someone, screenshot the screen, save any numbers or codes in your phone or beloved dropbox, and save any confirmation emails. A six digit number saved in the notes application of my phone virtually saved my life when I had my accommodation crisis, so write anything down that could help you if you have an issue with something like accommodation. Trust me.

So, there you go. Those were my five most frustrating problems and how to overcome them, I just thought it would be good to post it somewhere in the hope that someone takes my advice and avoids the absolute disaster that I had.

I am currently on my way to Ikea for a quick university shop!

I'll post again soon,
Mir

Packing

This post comes a little late, as I stupidly managed to delete the whole thing somehow before I published it. The next few minutes will be spent getting frustrated, trying to remember what I wrote. Well this got off to a bad start, didn't it? On the plus side, I am getting some practice with the new bluetooth keyboard (it's quite small, so I often type the wrong letters, or type nothing at all).

I have been busying myself with the task of finding out what I have and haven't already got for university. We've had a trip to Wilkinson's so far, and I am now the proud owner of a sieve, a pan that cost under £3, a wooden spoon that cost 37p, and a set of weighing scales. Not to mention the measuring jug that my mum is jealous of!

Buying all these things, which in my house, I don't need to exclusively own, has made me a little nervous about being on my own, properly, for the first time in my life. But also, I am excited about being more independent and meeting new people, that sort of thing. Freshers starts in about 2 weeks, and looks like it's going to be a lot of fun, too.

The students' union at the University of Southampton is brilliant; I remember last summer they hired a petting zoo for the students, to de-stress for exams. If you want to see what they got up to, follow this link:
http://old.susu.tv/videos/watch/1222/The-Petting-Zoo-Exam-De-stressing
I hope they do it again this year, because I think it's a brilliant idea!

I think that's it for today, and my next post may come from my new bedroom (that sounds weird. New bedroom. I wonder how long I can keep it tidy for!),

I'll post soon anyway,

Mir