From November 25th to 29th, the SAERI Team had the delightful opportunity to host Laura Bates from the Falkland Islands Community School (FICS) as she completed her Year 10 Work Experience week with us.
Throughout the week, Laura engaged in various areas of SAERI. She began her experience with PhD student Amy Guest, who introduced her to the goals of her research on the Sub-tidal Ecology and Biogeography of the Falkland Islands, showcasing the marvels of the region's shallow marine life. Laura assisted Amy by adding information to underwater photos, learning to identify benthic marine life such as sponges, starfish, algae, crabs, anemones, sea cucumbers, and more. She acquired valuable Photo ID skills and gained experience using PhotoQuad. Additionally, Laura helped process fisheries bycatch samples and spent time rock pooling to explore the inshore marine life of the Falkland Islands.
Laura working in PhotQuad
Dr Valeria Mazzola took Laura out for fieldwork at Wireless Ridge, where she learned how to measure gas fluxes for the project titled "Improving Falkland Peatland GHG Data: Understanding Carbon Sequestration and Offsetting Feasibility." Laura also accompanied PhD student Stephen Gillanders in setting up invertebrate pitfall traps for his research on the European Earwig in the Falklands: How big is the threat?. Lastly, Dr Al Baylis demonstrated the tagging process of various animals and shared insights on the data that can be obtained from tagging.
Huge thanks go out to the Falkland College and the Falkland Islands Community School for allowing us to be a part of this amazing programme. We truly enjoyed having Laura with us and hope she found the experience enriching and informative!
Below Laura has written her own post from the week:
My week with SAERI - Laura Bates
I chose to do my work experience at SAERI because I had an interest in marine biology, during this week I got an insight into some things that SAERI do such as going to peatlands and looking at carbon dynamics, I also identified marine species from pictures that were taken of quadrats. I thought all of the photos and identifying species was very interesting and fun to learn. I liked taking samples and seeing the animals up close as I hadn’t seen some of them before.
Here is a summary about what I was able to do over this past week:
Monday
Today I have identified marine species that were in quadrats that were taken around the Falkland’s, some of the species that I identified include Anasterias Antarctica [common sea star] and Aulacoyma altar [ribbed mussel] and Bunodactis octoradiata [Red anemones]. I also counted marine animals on the seafloor via photo quadrats on the laptop. This was really confusing at first but in the end it was really fun and I really enjoyed it.
Tuesday
Today I went to Wireless Ridge [peatlands] with Valeria and Elaine, we looked carbon dynamics and how much carbon dioxide was being emitted and being absorbed from the peat. We also looked at the temperature of the soil from 2cm underground, the temperature was around 9.6 degrees Celsius then we measured the temperature from 10cm underground and it was 8.5 degrees Celsius. I also looked at graphs that had been plotted over the months and was shown how all of them vary on times of year, weather and season. Afterwards I answered a series of questions based and marine biology, did extra research and looked at recent events happening about marine life in New Zealand on BBC.
Wednesday
Today I did lots of research on marine biology and looked at events around the world such as climate change and marine life. In the afternoon Amy, Stephan and I went to bluff cove to catch earwigs that were caught in traps. The traps were cups put in a hole so when bugs would walk they would fall in the cups. Afterwards we went to the market garden which we set traps to catch earwigs, we set 6 and we leave them for 24-48 hours.
In the field with Dr Valeria Mazzola
Setting invertebrate pitfall traps
Thursday
Today I learnt what DNA sampling is. DNA sampling is a tissue, fluid, or other bodily sample of an individual on which a DNA analysis can be carried out. At 10:30 Amy, Elaine, Amy and I went to Hookers point to go rock pooling we saw red anemones [Bunodactis octoradiata], eel pouts [Austrolycus depressives], purple shore mussel [Perumytilus purpuratus], common sea stars [Anasterias Antarctica] and fighting crabs [Ancanthocyclus albatrossis]. Afterwards we took samples from shrimps and crabs in which we put in little containers that also contains ethanol.
Friday
On Friday I did some research on marine species and looked at events around the world on sea animals on BBC. Afterwards I looked at the process of tagging seals and other animals such as albatross, penguins, whales, and shags. It was really interesting to learn about and it was cool to see the data that the trackers supply the people with as it shows where the animals travel to.
My favourite part about the past week is looking more closely at shrimps and crabs, I really enjoyed rock pooling and learning about tagging animals, I would like to know more about the process of tagging animals as it sounds very interesting.
