Paua census 2

Another busy week was spent at Mahanga Bay helping with the paua census. This time as well as measuring length and weight of each paua their shell and foot colour was also assessed.

Visually each paua was ranked for shell colouring - ranging from white to dark blue, and foot colouring - ranging from cream to green/cream to black.

The colour of the foot was also recorded with a machine that measured brightness and green, yellowness.

The Asian paua market demands shells of a bright blue colour and white feet so research is being done to farm the paua to achieve these criteria. The measurments we helped do on 3500 paua will help work out which families are producing these characteristics the best.

NIWA Invertebrate Collection Website

While working at NIWA I have updated the Invertebrate Collection website. Lots of scientists come to visit the collection and the aim is to provide information that will help them know what facilities are here.

Still to come is the Fun Facts page which is aimed at the general public to explain a bit about what the collection is about. I am nearly finished this this should be live soon.

Baby Crayfish

Today I got to see some very cute baby crayfish. Each of these little critters are only about 3cm long. The photos below show the various stages. They youngest, clear one is on the right and the oldest dark on is on the left.



Crayfish eggs hatch out at sea and then as they form into the clear ones they make their way closer to shore.

As crayfish mature they outgrow their shells and moult (come out of their shell). They then grow a new shell.

The best thing I learnt today was that crayfish actually swim backwards - and I saw them doing it too!!

Groper Aquaculutre

This week I had the chance to work out at the Mahanga Bay Aquaculture facility again. This time it was with the groper. Out in the bay there are 2 rafts. Underneath each raft is a net that house the groper that are being farmed. At present there are around 650 groper. Our job was to help catch, measure and weigh each groper and then transfer some of them to the other raft.

Each groper has a microchip that is scanned and the length and weight data is entered against this fish. Scientists can then monitor growth rates.
The reason for splitting up the groper onto 2 rafts is to experiment with feeding to see if this makes any difference to growth rates. Both groups of fish would be fed the same amount but one lot would be fed twice a day and the other lot 8 times a day.
It was tricky work to catch the groper but luckily someone stronger than me did this. Before they could be measured the groper needed to be sedated. This didn't stop them flapping completely but made them a lot easier to handle. Once returned to the water it took a few minutes for the fish to come round completely but then they were off swimming happily again.
It was a beautiful Wellington day out on the raft and a fun experience. Especially getting to drive the boat!

Heading to Hikurangi - Voyage Information

To find out about the voyage I am going on and to read the daily ship to shore logs click here.

Where I work

Today I took some photos of the labs and collection where I am working at NIWA. Some of these photos will be used on the NIWA Invertebrate Collection website that I am developing.

This shows the shelves where the jars of invertebrates are kept. They are arranged by phylum and then genus and species. I am getting the hang of finding where things are.









At the entrance to the collection is a selection of the different types of invertebrates in the collection. Last week when the Wellington cluster group of Teacher Fellows came to visit they were really interested in looking at all the strange things.









At the back of this lab there is a fume hood that you can use when working with ethanol or formalin. It sucks out the nasty vapours.







One of the labs. You can see the microscope that scientists use to have a closer look at the specimens so they can identify them.






This is the bench where we work with dry or frozen samples.











Sadie has gone into the -20 degrees freezer to collect a box of frozen samples. She had to put on a big, thick freezer jacket because it is so cold in there.









The busy main lab. You can see Maz, Dean and Sadie hard at work!

The Countdown Begins

It is getting closer to the time when I will be part of a scientific voyage on the research ship Tangaroa.

The aim of the voyage is to find out about the diversity of marine life at different sites under the ocean - sea mounts, seeps, vents and canyons.

A range of different methods will be used such as trawling, core samples and underwater photography.

I will be involved with collecting the marine creatures, cleaning and preserving them and recording them on the database. I am not sure that I will be able to identify them so will leave that part up to the real scientists.

So far to get ready for the voyage I have been helping with getting all the gear ready that we need because once at sea we can't just pop to the shops to get what we forgot. There is so much gear that we need including safety gear, jars for specimens, gloves, ethanol for preserving the creatures, special paper , computers, cameras, bins and buckets ... the list is endless.

While I am on the boat I am in charge of writing the daily Ship to Shore logs to explain what we are doing. These will be posted on the internet so I will put the link here when I know it.

Playing with Paua

Maz, Barb and I spent a day out at the NIWA Aquaculture facility at Mahanga Bay working with Graeme Moss on the paua project. The scientists are researching how best to farm paua so they breed lots of families from different parents to determine the fasted growing and those that grow the biggest.

Each paua needs to be tagged so it can be identified to the parents that it came from.

Our job was to help put on their second tag, measure and weigh them and then enter this information on the database.

Putting on the tag was a bit tricky as it was a tiny spring that needed to be hooked onto the edge of the shell. As the shell grows it grows over the spring and keeps it in place.

The paua were really cool and some stuck pretty hard to your hand. The naughty ones tried to escape by flipping over onto their foot so we had to flick them back over onto their shells until we had finished with them.

I also learnt how to tell if a paua is male or female - if you look under the foot for the gonad you will see that the male's is creamy white and the female's is a shiny green colour.

Cool Tree

I really like this tree!!!!

The Portobello Marine Centre

When I was in Dunedin I went to visit the Marine Studies Centre at Portobello on the Otago Pennisula. Here are some photos of the creatures of saw.

Paua Aquaculture at Mahanga Bay

A few weeks ago I visited the aquaculture centre at Mahanga Bay in Wellington. One of their projects is to research the best method and types of paua to use for farming. The paua are grown in tanks and are fed either seaweed or pellets. The buckets tip water over them every 30 seconds or so to simulate the wave action that they would get in the ocean. This allows them to get oxygen. The small yellow tags are attached to the paua so that they can be traced.

I was amazed at the beautiful blue colour the outside of the shells had.

Classification System

I knew that there was a classification system for naming and grouping living things but since being at NIWA I have discovered a bit more about it. Each day I am dealing with the strange scientific names that are given to creatures. There are lots of rules associated with how names are given. The picture above shows the levels of the classification system. I could never remember the order but found this saying to help me : King Phillip Came Over From Great Spain. (Starting at the bottom this means - Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species)

Working in the Invertebrate Collection

The invertebrate collection at NIWA has thousands of jars of marine invertebrate. Scientists identify the creature inside the jar then each jar needs to be labelled and entered on the database. Sometimes the ethanol needs to be changed so I carefully remove the creature inside and clean out the jar before adding new ethanol. The ethanol helps to preserve the creature.

Cool Crabs

These are some crabs that we got to look out. They were collected near Antarctica and have been living in the freezer at NIWA. The scientist was thawing them out to identify them and label them. I thought they were really cute but then decided that this wasn't a very scientific word!

Paralomis Crab
Photo - Kerry Harrison - NIWA

Baby King Crab and Adult King Crab

Photo - Kerry Harrison - NIWA

Photo - Kerry Harrison - NIWA

Baby King Crab

Oysters, Oysters and more Oysters

Removing the heart with tweezers
Photo - NIWA - Kerry Harrison

Dabbing heart cells onto microscope slide

Photo- NIWA - Kerry Harrison

This week I have been working with a team who is testing oysters for the parasite Bonamia. Each year samples of oysters from Bluff are tested to see how much Bonamia is present. Bonamia is not harmful to humans but it can quickly kill a whole lot of oysters.

The process involves measuring the oyster then opening up the oyster with a sharp knife, (I was not very good at this) being careful not to destroy the flesh inside too much. Then you use a pair of tweezers to carefully pull out the heart. The heart is then dabbed on a microscope slide (I was good at this part). After that the heart is placed in a small vial with ethanol. We also cut out gill samples and a cross section of part of the oyster for testing too.

I did feel a bit sorry for the oysters as you could see them contract as you reached for their heart. I guess as a scientist you have to get used to that.

Before the slides are looked at under the microscope they had to be fixed and dyed so the cells could easily be seen.

I got to look at the slides under the microscope to see what Bonamia looks like (small blobs).

As a scientist doing this job you had to work carefully so that the oyster information was not mixed up. All samples had to be clearly labeled and tracked back to the oyster it came from. We used pencils for recording the information because they still worked when wet.

Each day we were able to take home about 2 dozen oysters. Shame I don't like them.

NIWA Collections

While at NIWA I am based in the Invertebrates Collection. This houses over 100,000 samples of sea invertebrates, mostly kept in jars of ethanol or formalin.

So far I have been involved with helping to maintain the samples by rehousing them in new jars with clean ethonal, updating the database and relabeling them.

I have seen some pretty cool creatures.

You have to work in a systematic way so that samples and labels are not mixed up.

Here is a photo of a large starfish in the collection.

(Photo - NIWA - Kerry Harrison)

Two more sleeps

Well there are now only 2 more days until I start at NIWA. I am feeling nervous and have so many questions about what I will be doing. Can't wait to get into it. It is really strange not to being setting up a class for the start of a year.