Two days later and I finally got the chance (and willpower) to type up my latest adventure: The S.S. Kirby and a morning boat cruise through the bay.
First day out on the boat also happened to be our first field trip of the semester!
Our day started out pretty early: 5 AM wake up call and 7 AM boat launch.
Definitely stocked up on plenty of water and motion sickness tablets, I'm pretty sure that my lab mates wouldn't have appreciated any extra samples in our phytoplankton, seagrass and formalin concoction.
Potential motion sickness aside, what an amazing day of collecting samples!
We had gotten extremely lucky with the weather since the forecast was predicting thunderstorms for the majority of the day. Luckily for us (not so much for the tourists), we escaped the rain and watched the coast of Magnetic Island get hit with a giant wall of rain while we cruised by and basked in the morning sun.
So you're probably asking, "why were you on a boat for class?"
One answer: Marine Biology awesomeness.
Essentially, we went on a four hour cruise to collect a butt ton of samples. On a more serious note, these samples will be used for the majority of our labs throughout the semester to try to answer several questions that we are interested in.
To start off the project, we selected two designated spots to collect samples from and use as comparisons: one close to shore and one further offshore. We were interested in looking at the various species of plankton populations and densities at the target locations through the water samples we collected as well as productivity levels. Plankton tow nets were used for collecting the samples, each net was used for three tows at each site of interest: the macro-tow net was towed at 5 knots for 5 minutes while the smaller mesh-sized net was used for a passive tow (our boat was idling) over a distance of 10m which was measured by rope beforehand.
Along with these net samples, we also lowered a CTD (Conductivity/Temperature/Depth instrument) to 10m after each tow. This gave us a profile reading of the water column as well as an ecological insight to the environment that the plankton were subjected to at the time of collection.
The major focus on these two sites was to compare offshore and inshore productivity levels as well as population densities of differing species of phytoplankton.
Questions we can be asking ourselves include:
Are phytoplankton more likely to have higher productivity offshore or inshore (closer to human populations or further out)?
What are the majority of plankton species that we are seeing in the given samples?
What does it mean and why?
What could be potential abiotic factors that could be influencing these population densities ?
Are there limiting nutrients or are more nutrients available for the inshore populations to access due to the recent runoffs caused by the continuous rainstorms?
Is there more turbulence/ human related upwelling that is allowing nutrients to be circulated closer to shore or is there no pattern at all?
You get the point, there are endless questions to ask. But analyzing these water samples can give us an insight or even a glimpse into the ecological backdrop of these various plankton populations. Aka, lots of microscope time and plenty of excel spreadsheets...as the saying goes: the more data, the merrier
Four hours, three re-applications of sunscreen, twelve net deployments, 12 Litres of samples, and four close calls of man overboard later... we were docked back at the port.
I would like to say I was productive for the rest of the morning but let's be honest, a nap is a girl's best friend.
Till Next time.
