Month: June 2022

World Ocean’s Day at 3rd grade Groton Elementary School

7 June 2022. This is World Ocean Week and many Marine Science students and faculty do their bit to increase outreach to our community. Hannes had the privilege of dropping by the 3rd graders of the Catherine Kolnaski Magnet School, talking about what Marine Scientists do, which ocean critters eat another and "What was the weirdest fish you ever caught?" Oh, and "Are you really sure that the Megalodon [Charchardon megalodon] is no longer alive?" Thank you to Mr. Moon, Mrs. Laudone for the opportunity to come visit the school!

WorldOceanDay01-CKMS7JUN22

WorldOceanDay02-CKMS7JUN22

NCMA2022 experiment update: first genetic material sampled

18 June 2022. We are happy to report that our genomic silverside experiment has progressed from "Can we really pull this off?" to "We think we just might" over the past weeks. The silverside larvae of these different crosses show stunning size variability, between populations and temperatures. We already obtained two early life mortality estimates and lots of genetic material, including a full set of crosses reared at 26C and ad libitum food, reaching 20 mm in roughly 4 weeks post hatch. Fingers crossed for the rest of the rearing time.

NCB-rest-larvae-to-be-counted-6-9-22
9 dph larvae from the North Carolina Batch fertilization, waiting to be counted on 9 June 2022

NCB-vs-MAB-rest-20C-3JUN22
Visually stunning comparison of 9 dph silverside larvae reared at 20C from North Carolina batches vs. Massachusetts batches

Menidia-26C-7JUN2022
Digital length measurements of a small subsample of silverside larvae from the 26C treatment (crosses unknown)

26C-ImageJ-example
Silverside juveniles subsampled on 16JUN 2022 from bucket 3 of tank D (D#), housing the Massachusetts Batch (B4 of 7) in the 26C treatment, counted via ImageJ, preserved in RNAlater