I Sea Gammarids in My Dreams

This morning we narrowly escaped the effects of hypothermia as we
completed our data collection (in the rain) for the first field
problem and began analysis (after a hearty, warm meal). In the
following picture you can see the extremely laborious process of
sorting and quantifying the gammarids (tiny weird shrimp things that
people don't eat) collected by the invertebrate testing group. Lake
Baikal contains an average of 30,000 gammarids per square meter -- as
you can imagine, analyzing the organisms in even a small amount of
lake water has provided us with quite a challenge.
In the afternoon many of the groups returned to various beaches along
Baikal to complete more testing. The invertebrate group scooped up a
few last buckets of wee beasties, the grazer exclusion group free-dove
their Final Four exclusion pens at Bol'shaia Kotynka and Chernaia Pad'
into place, and the dissolved oxygen/temperature/conductivity group
did a ton of sciencey stuff, such as placing 24 hour temperature
probes and measuring conductivity. Back in the lab, the coliform
bacteria/nitrate group tossed test tubes around in search of germs
until dinner.
After thoroughly sterilizing our hands and enjoying another excellent,
hot meal, we were treated to a lecture by renowned Russian ecologist
and Lake Baikal specialist, Oleg Timoshkin. Prof. Timoshkin (along
with three of his grad students) will be staying with us at the
Biostation and providing some experimental guidance for the next few
days. Tomorrow we will hear from these students, Yulia, Katya, and
Olya, about their research.
Abby and Rosamond