week. 7

05 August 16

At the beginning of every month, it is necessary to visit the field sites for sample collection and to insure the equipment is properly working and not damaged. On Monday we traveled to Welch Island and Whites Island. We had to take a boat on the Columbia, which was a new experience for me! I wore hip waders that were too big on my feet, and I got stuck in the mud. Stuart had to dig me out multiple times. It was a funny/embarrassing moment. On Tuesday, we worked in the lab and conducted nepholoemeter measurements. We had multiple problems occur and could only obtain data from one of our four runs. On Wednesday we traveled to the Fronz and Cambell site. It was a smooth day. Thursday we continued working on the gas vesicle collapse measurements. On Friday we traveled to Ross Island to collect samples from the bloom that is growing there. The cells we collected from Ross Island were extremely buoyant., more than any other sample we ran before. We ran a collapse curves with them, and we finally obtained the expected results with a sigmoidal collapse curve similar to what Walsby (1973) demonstrated. This is exciting data.

 It was decided that my research paper and poster will include the BMAA detection and the gas vesicle collapse results. I need to start the BMAA detection protocol because I currently have no results. This coming week will be busy.