First days of field and lab work

Wednesday Nico and I departed on the boat to collect our first research material. It was a perfect day out on the water with some clouds and hardly any wind. The goal of the pilot study we are conducting here is to get insight into the effects of local human use on the benthic fauna in this area.

We collected sediment in the harbour and former harbour of the mining industry using a Van Veen grab and stored this in little jars. As we never have done field work in this area before and it is known that the substrate of the seafloor in this fjord can consist of all kind of material (clay, sand, pebbles, rocks), it was a surprise what material we would be able to collect from this area. We were happy to find out that the sediment at these sites consisted of fine and clayish material. Perfect for further analysis! We also sieved out the benthic invertebrates present in the sediment samples. These were sorted and pooled per species. All research material will be transported back home for chemical analysis.

This afternoon we will depart on the boat again, this time to collect samples at an undisturbed area on the other site of the fjord. This way we compare results from the impacted sites with an undisturbed situation. Today the weather is even better than Wednesday with clear blue skies and no wind...