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.