New job!

Thanks to the LOVELY EJ I've got my first real (sort of) job in science!

It's only a part time one (hence the 'sort of'), and doesn't really start until January. I am going to be doing wee bit's up until then though, and it's a foot in the door with a relatively large employer locally, and will hopefully lead to much more :)

So what is it? Well it's basically a research job, studying the effects of the new local wind farm on birds. It's the first study in the world to have begun before the wind farm was built, and so will be the first to have definitive results on the subject.

Today I went to have an induction (health and safety stuff) on the site, first day is next Wednesday :D

How to kill moss, scientifically

I'm on an email list for Grad students at both Vic and Massey uni's, which means I get a constant flow of email about what is going on at both places. These range from "lost USB found in the tearoom" to "Guest academic speaking about bla bla bla"

Anyway, I've just got an email from Vic which I think is a real classic!

Normal people who want to get rid of moss somewhere public would maybe say something along the lines of:

"There is moss in the glasshouse, so I'm going to spray it. Please keep out for a day or two. Thanks"
(Moss & Lichen on Mt Arthur, Nelson)

However, in the scientific world, it sounds like this:

"It is my intention to try to deal with the problem of the slippery glasshouse floor later this afternoon. I am going to water the floors with Watkins Algae and Moss killer. This contains benzalkonium chloride and copper sulphate. I want this left undisturbed over the weekend so I can monitor the effect. Please do not go into the glasshouse after 3pm today until Tuesday afternoon 2nd June Thanks."

NO JOKE, that is the exact wording in the email!!

Scientists are... special :P

Lab trials in Palmy

This trip to Palmy I'm putting my test subjects into tanks in the lab, and then adding Roundup...
It's ok though - they're invertebrates and don't have rights!

When I got to my lab I quickly learned that there weren't really enough tanks for me to use, so I went out and bought some poly boxes (for $2 each!!) which brings back lots of fish farm memories!

This is what they looked like lined up on my bench....
Unfortunately things haven't been going as planned...

The Daphnia in my control tanks (with no roundup) have all been dying, and out of the daphnia with Roundup, half have been surviving!! This is not what's meant to happen!
We decided it could have been the polystyrene boxes, so used a few glass tanks, but the same thing happened again!

Now I'm trying different water (some tanks with rainwater and some with water from a filter) but the whole thing is really annoying, as I was told the water I was using was from a spring and safe... Turns out it's just lost me 2 days! Oh well....

the frog & the prince

Before I start, I'm not a royalist, and definitely not a republican, but I do think Prince Charles really is The Man!

He's always been outspoken about things important to him, like the benefits of living organically and issues about the environment, and now his latest push is about the worlds rainforest's. With the help of some celebs he's attempting to make us realise the importance of rainforest's, especially in relation to their importance in stabilising the global climate.

Make sure you check out the website, and sign up for their updates

DO IT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!

Lab work again...

Well i'm back in the lab, and this is about half of the samples I've got to go through.. It's going to take about 40 hours i think - I'd better get on with it!

Eel trapping

Over the last 2 days I've been up at my thesis site, attempting to see what the eel population of my thesis site is. The plan was to do a quick survey before and after the spraying of Roundup on my site to see if the eels are effected...

Step 1: put out the fyke nets (which we did yesterday in the rain... not so fun)
Step 2: stay with Danny and Bruno over night, with mandatory wine drinking and Desperate Housewives
Step 3: pull out the nets and see what we got!

So here I am this morning, pulling out one of our larger nets (thankfully it was a nice day today!)

One of the interesting things we caught were about 200 adult Diving Beetles. These are the adults of the larvae I found a few months ago - Onychohydrus hookeri - and like the larvae, the adults are also pretty high up the food chain...

In a pond that is...

This is what they can do to a Common Bully which was stuck in a net with them for a few hours... not a nice way to die I think!

Unfortunately most of the beetles we caught were drowned in the nets - the adults need to breath air which the collect from the surface and hold under there wing cases.

The good thing about finding so many of these is that we could get some compelling stats if the population drops much after spraying... so that was an interesting twist and possibly some good extra data that we weren't expecting to collect.

And the to the eel's - we did find 2 of them (not as many as we were hoping for!) but they were both huge (well over 1m). This is pretty big for Short Fin Eels, but it's still odd that there weren't more young'ns with them...

They are pretty quick and didn't feel like chilling in the bin while I took photos!

Lots of other things to see - there were heaps of Damselfly adults flying about and mating - male on the top ;)
And there were lots of Dragonflies too - although these weren't so easy to catch on camera! If you can't find it have a look at the end of this post....

Pretty pics to end with - it really was an awesome day up there today.

Thank you so much to Logan for helping me out, and Danny and Bruno for putting me up for the night :)

Here's where the dragonfly is :P

The future of fish farms??!

Wow, I've just read a very cool article!
For those who don't want to read it, the gist it that;

a: fish have a memory that spans months NOT 3 seconds! (Yes I have been telling you all that for years, but it has once again been proven)

b: fish can be trained to come when called, therefore meaning that they could be trained, then released into the wild and called back for periodic feeding and harvesting.

This means that fish farms could operate without cages, and the problems associated with them (concentrated pollution from one point, transfer of disease in confined spaces etc)
Pretty cool ehh??!
This means fish farming could go from looking like this:

To this:

This is pretty exciting! Although I'm sure issues of the 'ownership' of the fish, especially if they are out in the sea, could be a problem... Its a pretty cool idea though, especially if the farm is in a semi-contained place like the lochs in Scotland...

Bring on the future!!

Yet another thesis trip

I went and did another sampling trip for my thesis today. For those who haven't been there, when I talk about having to bash through heaps of Raupo, this is what it looks like when you stand on top of my car - it's over 2m high and hard work!
Today I found some nice wee frogs, which made it more interesting!

I also found one in my gumboot, but after an hour of walking it wasn't such a pretty picture! :S

On the way home I also got a crack in my windscreen from a stone, which isn't so exciting... Lets see how long it takes them to find a replacement for my car!

Lab work

I've been doing a bit of lab work this week (for my thesis) and now I'm all caught up - HORAY!
this is one of the creatures I've found - it's the larvae of NZ's largest Diving Beetle, Onychohydrus hookeri, and it's massive!

This is the smallest one I found - you can tell its going to get huge from the size of its head - very disproportional like baby humans (and some adults humans, but this isn't a freak show so I'm not going there...)

And here is a big boy - when I caught this I was, at the time, paddling in its pond in nothing but shorts, and suddenly had the sensation that something (or things) were biting my feet and legs... Needless to say I exited as quickly as I could!

It was this big! *Tom holds his hands far apart* and to prove it, here is a photo I took with it and Fenn together - so you can see how big it is against her...

See!!!

Such a brave dog is little Fenn...