In Love With Plankton - Russ George

What matters is not what is written on the page, what matters is what is written in your heart. My essays and ideas in ocean ecology for hearts and minds.

The reason to do all this is about working to pioneer new methods to save the world - one ocean plankton bloom, one forest, not one discovery at a time. All at once. This blog and my lifes work is dedicated to my 3 children and 2 grandchildren and yours too...and to mysteries of nature some discovered most not.

ocean_advice

Things I now believe in, mermaids. Things I no longer believe in, dynamite fishing.

Things I now believe in, Mermaids. Things I no longer believe in, Dynamite fishing.

Ocean life taking charge!

If you know any good fish puns let minnow.

Now that's bark that barks!

Now that's bark that barks, we need more natural forest art like this

#8 Long Muddler, best Western small water Rainbow and Brown fly

#8 Long Muddler, best fly ever for Western small water Rainbows and Browns.

One of my Old Massett forestry techs measuring a Sitka Spruce spared from the saw forever!

One of our Old Massett forestry techs measuring a Sitka Spruce a few years back. This tree is now spared, along with a hundred thousand friends, from the saw forever! It only took ten years of effort .

When the salmon are in the river a few feet away and you look up

When the salmon are in the river a few feet away and you look up WOW, but where a hat!

Imagine having to cross the river here to get to work on another forest restoration and preservation project.

Imagine having to cross the river here to get to work on another forest restoration and preservation project.

Walking distance to work.

Walking distance to work.

In Love With Plankton

In Love With Plankton

Russ George / March 23, 2013 / Comments Off / Get Your Geek On

Studying plankton requires some passion

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Sorting Zooplankton in Ship Wet Lab

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Mmmm, Zooplankton…We even made some Planktamite.. far more flavourful than Marmite or Vegemite.

If you are going to replenish, restore, and tend to ocean pastures you must first study plankton, and you might as well get a lot of samples, heck, you might even want to invent a more efficient method of sampling.

We did all of those things, before, during, inside, and outside of the our particular plankton bloom and we did it around the clock.

We have thousands of samples of phytoplankton and thousands of samples of zooplankton. Each sample contains hundreds to thousands of plankton individuals.

Collecting phytoplankton is a relatively easy chore, however viewing, describing and estimating the quantity of phytoplankton can take quite a while.

Collecting zooplankton on the other hand is a much more difficult task. It takes big nets, to catch small creatures. Once caught, the zooplankton then need to be sorted and sub-sampled.

Here’s a video on our plankton sampling

Tags: copepods, haida, ocean, plankton, science, taxonomy, village, zooplankton

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