Our Head of Science Dr Charlotte Braungardt is currently aboard the Pelican leading some interesting science with the voyage crew.
Here is an update from Charly:
On Sunday we did a beach clean in Port Ellen on Islay and also looked for invasive species of crab on the sandy beach. Luckily, we only identified native species.
We saw a couple of pods of porpoises, dolphins, a seal and a minke whale on our two-hour cetacean survey on Monday. Four voyage crew helped, including Liv, Mathilda, Abigail and Hayley.
Yesterday, we looked at a plankton sample from the Firth of Clyde, South Arran. Dinoflagellates, a single cell micro algae, were very abundant and zooplankton was also diverse, featuring many different copepods and other crustaceans and their larvae, as well as tiny snails, jellyfish and Combe jelly larvae.
We also looked at kelp leaves under the microscope and found a tiny nudibranch, about 3 mm long, that looked very glamorous! Nudibranch on a kelp leaf that is covered in bryozoans, another animal, each in its own little brick-shaped house. We had a bit of a rock-pool ramble, too!