Clening up - T+2

Today we will pack and clean up. We are leaving for Santiago tomorrow, and then back to Helsinki via Paris on Sunday.

Alicia cleaning the cubitainers

Tere preparing the zooplankton samples

Trip to Valparaiso

Now that the experiment is over, we had to make a trip to Valparaiso to deliver some samples. The inorganic nutrients will be measured at the Pontifica Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso. After delivering the samples we used the opportunity to have a look around the city, which has the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Last sampling day - T12

Today is a hectic day as we are doing the final sampling. The remaining water is consumed for filtration, community composition and primary production measurements.

All the cubitainers have been taken out to make sampling easier

Answers for the post "A closer look at the lab"

 Stove (used as a bunsen)

 Periodic table

 Microscope slide with lugol (fixative)

 Filtration unit

 Rack for eppendorf tubes

Cuvette for the fluorescence measurements

Zooplankton beasts

Tere counting zooplankton with an inverted microscope 

 Two tiny beasts (Didinium sp.) and diatoms

 Didinium sp. is the most abundant ciliate in the samples

Laboea sp. (aka Carrot shaped ciliate) 

A closer look at the lab

Here are some of the things we use in the lab, can you guess what it is?

T9

Yet another sampling day. By now we have all the routines nailed down so everything runs smoothly.

Alicia is in charge of the filtration

Kristian is trying to make sense of the data

A day with the Viu family

Our free day in the Viu Manent vineyard was splendid! Vicente Viu, Martín Viu and José Miguel Viu (4th and 3rd generation of Viu's family) invited us to  local dishes and grilled meat specialties, all accompanied with their own wine pairing, which was delicious! They also showed us the vineyard extensions and a little museum with photos and documents that follow the winery history. Thank you very much!! Muchas gracias! Moltes gràcies!

Toby labeling falcon tubes in the car

In the Rayuela Restaurant, in the Vineyard, with Jose Miguel and Vicente.

 Dear grape vines

Riding club

The entrance door by: Vicente Viu Hojas

Wine region

Today we leave the sea behind and we travel inland!  We are visiting the vineyard "Viña Viu Manent", in the Colchagua region (wine region). Salud con vinos viu!

Sampling day: T7

The experiment is running nicely. On the first day we added different additions of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in the ratios 16 and 3. Nitrogen is the limiting nutrient and and when it starts to be depleted growth of the algae slows down and stops. This is what is happening now in our tanks, and more so in the low N:P ratio - just as expected :-)

Growth in the dinoflagellate dominated cubitainers

An evening walk around the station

Patterns in the sand

The different communities

Tobias has started counting the samples and we have 3 different communities: two diatom dominated and one dinoflagellate dominated. The two diatom dominated ones differ in that the first is dominated by Chaetoceros sp. (with a loto of Dinobryon sp. as well) and the other is dominated by Thalassiosira sp and with some Chaetoceros sp as well.

Counting algal cells using an inverted microscope

Thalassiosira sp.

The sampling day is over and the sun is going down

Status: one of the treatments have reached the chlorophyll peak and the other treatments seem to follow soon. There also seem to be a growing copepod population that probably have a good time at the moment with plenty of food.

 a bit of cheating as this picture is from yesterday and today it is grey

Another sampling day

It seems like the algae are growing and behaving as expected. Our goal was to have three different communities in the cubitainers and we have succeeded in finding water with different initial conditions. Crossing fingers for this to keep up.

Taking the samples

Sampling for bacteria

Filtration, one of the main jobs during the experiment

Visit to Pablo Neruda's house

As there were no sampling today we made a short visit to the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's house, which is situated a few km from the station. Neruda won the Nobel prize in literature in 1971 and is one of the best known poets in Spanish literature:

'quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos' Pablo Neruda