???
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.
Tammy and I figured out a potentially cheap way to make our own little plankton tow which we could use to make monthly or biweekly plankton community surveys. Real plankton tow nets run $150+ for a small one (I’m hoping we can “buy” one off a pair of retiring professors). We converted a small meshed carbon filter bag for an aquarium to use a hanger section to hold it open. Makes a 3″ diameter, 12″ long net. We tested it briefly this afternoon. The results? Well for $5 it worked decently. We got a few critters, including one copepod, three gastropod veliger larvae, three naupliar crustacean larvae and this mystery creature.
Unfortunately the photos of the other creatures did not turn out very well.
Juvenile (not larval) brittle star of some sort? Although it looks like it, brittle stars have 5 arms…this has 7 maybe 8.
A small or juvenile pycnogonid (sea spider)? Algae? Pollen? ????
This critter has a diameter of under 0.5mm (it’s diameter is less than that of a 0.5mm mechanical pencil lead — very precise yes?) and this shot was 45x through the home microscope, using extension tubes to jerry rig a system to mount the camera to the lens. I’ll have to see about borrowing one of the eyepieces from the school scopes and see if I can get a slightly better result using their probably better optics.
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hmmm… will have to point my daughter over here and see if she can ID this. I don’t have a clue.
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