After we had placed the herring eggs into the mesocosms enclosed in their incubators about two weeks earlier, we calculated that they should have been hatching around the 11th May, spread over two to three days. Around that time Micha has been checking on them daily to see whether the first ones have hatched. The […]
Samples on a journey
Thanks to Lenni and his big car, today a lot of samples were sent with him from Kristineberg back to Kiel. It´s already the second time during the running experiment, that someone took samples home to GEOMAR, which gives us not only new freezer space here to keep on collecting and storing samples but also makes our […]
Hello – Goodbye :The Saga of the Roncalli Cod Broodstock Circus
Hello again we are back in Kristineberg to see how are Cod Broodstock are fairing and Gwen and I have brought reinforcements Daniel our “Ace Fisherman”. Martina, Flemming and Micha have been keeping a watchful eye on them and we hope they have enjoyed the warmer water and are ready to spawn. The plan was […]
The KOSMOS rocks
In the second episode of the fifth season of the cult TV series from the 90s “X-files”, the beautiful Agent Scully meets with Dr. Vitagliano. He was asked by the FBI to grow some unclassified cellular material found in an ice core sample. To his surprise, the cells started to divide. Agent Scully: “They began […]
No fish in the Gullmar Fjord – but fishies in the lab and the KOSMOS?
After weeks of trying ourselves and with every fisherman around, we still couldn’t get any spawning fish from the Gullmar Fjord. But nevertheless, we have now cod and herring larvae in the lab and soon herring larvae in the mesocosms. The cod are from a fishing trip in the Øresund and hatched in the lab […]
Everything you wanted to know about (urchin) sex
Daddy? – Yes – How do you make babies? – (…) – Daddy? – Well, first you need sodium chloride solution in filtered sea water… – I am gonna ask mummy. If you are a parent, you are doomed to answer questions about life, the universe and everything. Being a marine biologist may help you […]
Welcome to the real world
Pluteus larvae of the green sea urchin “Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis” What would you do if I give you 1 million euros to investigate the impact of ocean acidification? There is no good or bad answer to this (tricky) question. There is so much to be done. But we all agree that it is important to collect […]
Harvest, part one
Over the daily routine of collecting samples, nursing fish larvae, maintaining the mesocosms, filtering tons of water, counting plankton, analysing data and maaaaaaybe going to the sauna in the evenings, the memory of our little media invasion must have become blurred for the KOSMOS 2013 team at Kristineberg. Back in Kiel, I am still enjoying […]
There and back again
Plankton wheel with incubation bottles. Photo: H. Horn, AWI When the news about the bloom finally kicking in reached me on the lovely but remote island of Helgoland, it was time to pack and to go back to Kristineberg. The“Dune ferry – plane to the mainland – train to Kiel – ferry to Gothenburg – […]
The party is over …
The phytoplankton bloom party in our mesocosms is over. The booze (i.e. inorganic nutrients) is gone and the crowds at the lower end of the food web are leaving. The exit door is the sediment trap at the bottom of the mesocosm, which is filing up quickly much to Tim’s delight. Surprisingly, our VIP bloomer, […]