Up Up and Away

This week has been all about preparing for my pilot experiment. On Monday, my lab mate and I collected mud from the field to prepare all of the test mesocosms for this experiment and were treated to a few dolphins foraging for food nearby. After nearly four hours in the field, due to some technical difficulties, we brought the mud back to the lab and set up the first part of the pilot experiment. Later on I used a process called elutriation to add extra animals to these test mesocosms. Picture taking a colander or sieve and panning for gold in mud but instead of gold you are looking for tiny animals. These extra animals will allow me and my collaborators to see if the glow in the dark sand is really a viable tracking method for this experiment. Additionally, I set up a small photo area of the environmental chamber with a UV light, black box for the background, and a camera that Dr. Ingels provided, which will allow for easy and hopefully rapid photo capture during this pilot experiment.

I will do the final two steps for this pilot setup on Sunday: luminophore massing and additions and microplastics additions. While the microplastics additions don't need to be exact amounts, I am testing out the amount of glowing sand that will be right for this experiment. In a test run I did a few weeks back, I came to an amount of 2 grams, but I may need to reevaluate since the mud I used for that test is different than the pilot experiment mud. This means, however, that I will officially start this two-week pilot experiment on Sunday. I've mentioned it before, but the purpose of the experiment is to test and troubleshoot for the full experiment which I am planning for the end of July. The full experiment is a collaboration with international colleagues, so this pilot will provide early insights into the full experimental results and will allow me to fix any issues before the more meaningful final project.

No picture for this week, as I've been so busy getting everything set up, but stay tuned next week for some wonderful glowing sand pictures, courtesy of this pilot experiment.