juveniles

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Ascophyllum babies at Askö

Springtime means spring cleaning, wherever one thinks it might be needed.
This Monday we went out to the Askö laboratory to prepare for the upcoming season.

As usual, the thermoconstans room (walk-in fridge) at our disposal in the lab has been filled with pots and pans containing different experiments over the winter. High time to see what amounted to something and what didn’t, throw things out and clean the buckets.

We kept some Ascophyllum nodosum from the Swedish west coast in a bucket with saltier water, to see if we could get it to reproduce and get little babies to settle on ceramic tiles in the bottom of the bucket.

The Ascophyllum did not dissappoint us!

Wee baby-Ascophyllum on tile.

Wee baby-Ascophyllum on tile.

This is how cute Ascophyllum-babies are when they are but a millimeter tall.
The picture is taken by mobile camera through the ocular of a stereo loupe.

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Into the deep

Here is a clip from the “seaweed-bed” at the Askö laboratory, where most of our experiments are going on. This was filmed in january 2012, with the purpose of checking on the bed, change light/temperature sensor and collect some plates for measure of juvenile growth.

The bed holds about 60 ceramic tiles, onto which we have “sown” bladderwrack and some other wrack crosses. We use the non-glazed side of the tiles since it is important that the surface is porous enough for the seaweed eggs to attach. This makes for some interesting conversations when we buy tiles!