How I just love the smell of thawing sardines in the morning...

Sorry for the long delay everyone. I have been swamped and time here just seems to speed by! Today I would like to give you a brief overview of the daily work we do here to make sure all our fish are doing well.

Husbandry, is the science of breeding, rearing and caring for the animals in our facilities. Now while the Flats team isn't involved in the breeding of fish in our labs, we must still maintain their care for the duration of their stay. In the wet lab our fish are housed in large tanks where fresh seawater is brought in through a massive PVC piping system. The picture below is of one of the tanks that holds the bonefish we caught in the field.

The PVC pipe located in the right hand corner is the inflow of seawater, while the pipe located in the center of the tank is called the standpipe. The standpipe allows enough water to drain out of the tank to prevent overflowing, but not enough to drain the tank completely. If you also notice in the left side of the photo, there is a clear tube. This tube is connected to the air supply for the whole wet lab, and is then attached to an airstone which goes in the tank. If you remember, airstones are porous stones that diffuse air into the water and helps to maintain the dissolved oxygen in the water.

When I arrive in the wet lab in the morning, my first responsibility is to check on the fish and take tank conditions. That involves using a piece of equipment called a YSI (see below). YSI is a company that creates and develops sensors, instruments and software for environmental water quality monitoring and testing. The particular piece of equipment used here at CEI is a YSI PRO2030 and is used to take tank Temperature, Salinity, and Dissolved Oxygen. We also use a separate probe called an ExStik II to measure the pH (second image below).

The final measurement we take is the ammonia in the system. Fish excrete their nitrogenous wastes as ammonia, and in the tanks, these levels can build up quickly. Levels also tend to increase in higher water temperatures. Ammonia is toxic to fish in levels above 1 ppm (parts-per-million),and therefore, needs to be carefully monitored. If the levels ever reach 1 ppm (and this rarely occurs) we lower the water level and bring it back up with fresh water.

As there are two Flats Interns this semester, we split up the morning responsibilities. While I take tank conditions, the other intern thaws out a container full of sardines cuts them up, and feeds all the fish in the wet lab. Once that is done, the sardine heads and tails must then be transported to the artificial mangroves and dumped. The fish get thawed in the 4th vault which also doubles as our office space. So needless to say it does not smell pleasant in there during this time. It's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it...and I wouldn't trade this job for anything!

Until next time!

Sincerely,

Your apologetic-for-taking-so-long-to-update Field Biologist