Fieldwork between floating glacier ice
By Online team WUR
– By: Isolde Puts –
Floating glacier ice. (© Martine van den Heuvel-Greve)
Fieldwork; sampling water and dirt
On a small research vessel, Teisten, we went out to sample algae and sediments. Surrounded by several sea-glaciers it is a pretty sight floating amidst many icebergs. Puffins are floating on the fjord on our way to the sampling station. Two walruses visited us as we were throwing down the sediment sampler up to 300m depth and our plankton nets. You couldn’t see much of them when they’re swimming in the water; a piece of their fat body, a small head and their enormous tusks.
Algae are sampled using a fine meshed planktonnet. (© Isolde Puts)
Our friendly captain, a coastguard, laughed as we fill up our so-maniesth small bottle of water or bucket of dirt. We too, but because we were excited to have a closer look at these samples under the microscope!
Back in the harbour we saw a black guillemot diving for food. You could easily follow the black and white wings under water when it searched for food. Then it was time to bring the buckets with our treasures on shore to process them in the lab.
Read on here.
A puffin (© Martine van den Heuvel-Greve)
The Wageningen research team on board of Teisten. From left to right: Martine van den Heuvel-Greve, Tinka Murk, Isolde Puts. (© Martine van den Heuvel-Greve)
Sediment is collected using a Van Veen grab (© Martine van den Heuvel-Greve)
A curious walrus next to the vessel (© Isolde Puts)
A black guillemot (© Martine van den Heuvel-Greve)
Bucket transport to the lab (© Martine van den Heuvel-Greve)
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