Talking to a friend down here, he said “days and months can drag by like they are never going to end but weeks always fly by.”  That was sure this week.  We collected a few samples on Monday but the most memorable part of the dive was that we were mirrored by a seal the whole time.  He didn’t feel like getting his photo taken as is clear from this grainy shot below:

This seal was constant company but would not hold still for a good photo.

Rory labeling away. This week we sliced our cores into a total of 288 different containers to undergo a variety of processing later.

But the main task for the week was breaking down one of the big time points of our experiment. The cores have started to take on their mind of their own and integrate the food we have given them.

Here is one of our cores mid processing. Each one of the syringes go to a different analysis and the rest of the mud that is not in those cores gets sieved and the species separated out from it.

The processing involves getting a bunch of sample vials and bags labeled and then sub coring the mud with a series of syringes that we have cut the tops off. On Tuesday and Thursday we processed a total of 24 cores, which made up four replicates and each of our six treatments. One of those subcores gets sorted live under a scope and that is how I have spent my waking hours since Tuesday. Here are some of the things I have been looking at:

Spiophanes: