Sampling in the harbour
By Online team WUR
– By: Martine van den Heuvel-Greve –
Two essential parts for our gammarid hunt: a neopreen wading suit (keeps us warm) and an aquarium fishing net. (© Martine van den Heuvel-Greve)
Sampling gear
For our test we need to catch small crustacean type invertebrates, gammarids. We hope to be able to catch these directly in the harbour next to the marine laboratory.
Wearing a neoprene wading suit to keep us warm we enter the beach in the harbour. I turn a stone in the surf zone, pull a small aquarium net over the under size of the stone and the sea floor and check my net… What a surprise: it’s filled with gammarids! In only half an hour we can sample enough for the first tests. What a relieve!
Two essential parts for our gammarid hunt: a neopreen wading suit (keeps us warm) and an aquarium fishing net. (© Martine van den Heuvel-Greve)
During sampling we have the pleasure to see more of the Arctic marine life: a krill (polar shrimp), sea angel and sea butterfly (both pteropods, or winged sea snails) are also caught so we can study them from up close before they are released again into the sea.
Once and a while we have a visitor in the harbour. An Arctic tern shrieks above our head. It’s hoping to pick some food where we fish for gammarids. A harbour seal approaches us several times to check us out. With curious eyes it watches what we’re doing for a while. Then it swims back to sea.
Great sampling here! Read on about Arctic algea collection.
Krill (© Tinka Murk)
The gammarid, Gammarus setosus (© Tinka Murk)
A sea angel (© Tinka Murk)
A sea butterfly (© Tinka Murk)
A curious harbour seal checking us during our work (© Isolde Puts)