We have finished most of our work in the deeper water of Lake Fryxell, so my first task today was to retrieve instruments and markers that we had under the ice. I retrieved the LiCor again so Kay could download the data while I finished other dive tasks, and then he dove and put the LiCor out in a new shallow location. I also retrieved all the ice screws and lines that we had on the underside of the ice. I had to pause for a few moments and untangle myself from the loose string - I was getting a bit wrapped up in it! Our deep area is now "cleaned up" and we are starting on the shallower profiles. When all is done, Peter, Ian, and Kay will have nice profiles along an entire transect from shallow to deeper water. I also took a few core samples from two of our transect sites. A very exciting part of my dive was that I stayed DRY! I was so excited! It felt so good not to have freezing cold water dripping down my arms and soaking my clothes! It has been a battle to get the suit "patched", but well worth the effort! We have nick-named my suit the "goop suit" because I have so much glue all over it! Kay dove and took Hal to a spot in the shallower water to do some more profiling. Two successful dives today!
This afternoon, we brought one of the core samples into the Jamesway and Ian made a microscope slide of some of the surface mat. Peter had sent a microscope out from town for us. At first, we looked at the creatures using the mercury bulb on the microscope so we could see their fluorescence. Diatoms give off a red fluorescence when they photosynthesize, and cyanobacteria give off a yellow fluorescence. Check out the pictures! It was so fun to see them moving around under the slide - I even got some video clips to show when I get back to school. There were also ciliates swimming around in the mix!
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You've seen this picture before - it's the top few layers of the core sample. Ian extracted a small sample from the very top layer to put under the microscope.
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Ian - hunting for critters! The core sample is in the tube in front of Ian.
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These red "critters" are diatoms. There are other creatures that give off red fluorescence, but these are diatoms.
(I feel the need for a mercury bulb scope at Rye Junior High! It's so exciting to look at the creatures this way!)
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This is another shot of the diatoms, but just coming into view on the bottom left is a ciliate. It wiggled around in the diatoms for a bit before spinning out of view.
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Some unidentified critters! I don't mean that they have never been seen before, just that we can't see enough to be able to identify them. But they're fun to look at!
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This long "strand" is a cyanobacteria. |
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These are cyanobacteria. Notice how different in structure they are from the diatoms. There are a couple diatoms towards the bottom of the photo!
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A slightly better view of the strands of cyanobacteria. They almost looks like strings of beads!
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These globular creatures are actually amoeba! It is so amazing to open up entirely new worlds through the power of microscopy! It's incredible to think that all this activity is going on in just a few specs of the surface mats. I look forward to viewing more samples under the microscope!
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I took a few samples from a couple of our transect sites today. When Ian prepared them for lab analysis, he found this calcite deposit in one of the samples. We believe calcite gets deposited as a result of activity from the organisms within the mat. The living organisms live and grow all around the calcite deposit. We called this one the "Green Monster"!
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