I've been at the Scottish Association for Marine science in Oban since Septemember and time is going quickly...as is the light! It was great starting at SAMs with the Arctic cruise as it meant that I had already met lots of people which made settling in much easier (thanks Emily and Marie)! Since moving to Scotland I have been living with my friend Ali Rose in Fort William which has been great fun, but now it's time to move to Oban as the 2 hour commute everyday is getting very tiring! It's such a beautiful place to work, I am very lucky. Especially as at SAMs there are a group of fun people who like climbing, mountain biking (I have found a love for this sport), running and snorkelling! So I feel like I am seeing Scotland in all it's glory.
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| View over Dunstaffnage bay looking up towards Loch Etive where we go sampling |
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| Loch Etive - this is where I do weekly trips out on the SAMs boat Seol Mara |
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| We are currently working with a collaberator called John Cohen from the Univeristy of Delaware: here is the research he does and what we have been helping him out with http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/our-people/profiles/jhcohen |
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| This is our daily walk around the castle that we do at lunch time |
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We have also been collaberating with the British Antarctic Survey to work out what samples we can get in the Arctic when we all go up the Fram Strait in May 2018.
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| I have also been to two conferences since I've been at SAMs. The Arctic Conference held by SAMs was in Oban where lots of collaberators turned up to share there science and share each others resrouces and knowledge, it was very interesting! Then we all went to Glasgow for the Changing Arctic Ocean conference to hear what analysis all of the projects have done from the Barents sea cruise that we did a few months ago and then we started to plan what our next cruises are going to focus on. One major thing that came out of us all meeting up was that all of the scientific questions that we have been asking should be taylored to anwser questions about policy. |
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| I have been learning how to do respiration experiments on the tiny copepods! Leaving them over night in individual wells to see how the little creaters use up their oxygen. |
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| Incubated over night |
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| Each Calanus copepod has it's own little well ... it's new home for 24-48 hours. I will be conducing this same experiment on the ship in June. |
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| Pasteur pippettes...I use alot of these |
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| I never ever thought I would get into anylitical chemistry but I am actually really enjoying it and understanding it which suprised me! This is thin layer chromatography with the fatty acid samples that I collected from the Barents sea. |
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| By using a standard you can see how the molecules seperate, the standard is pure PUFA (fatty acid) so by comparing where that standard is you can see where your samples's fatty acid has run up the plate. |
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| First out of 100 samples woohooooo |
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Then after the TLC plate the samples are run through a gas chromatographer this seperates all of the molecules with the smaller carbon chains running through the column first.
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| A chromatogram is printed showing the rention times of the molecules and the bigger the peak the higher the amount of that molecule in the sample. |
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Loch Etive
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| Recently Dave and I travelled all of the way to Liverpool (it took 9 hours !!!) to discuss the next cruise with the Arise guys from Liverpool! It was a good trip and we got very organised ready for our meeting with BAS next month about how our project is going to run on the JCR. |
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This is where we are heading in May 2018. All the way from Southampton on the JCR up the Fram Strait and the West of Greenland. We are going to be filtering lots of water, dunking CTDs, dunking lots of zooplankton nets and conducting lots of experiments! Very exciting.
Stay tuned to see where I'm going to be living for my Scotland in Winter.......This blog might take a slight change for the next few months.!
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