Research at sea is exciting

Post date: Jul 27, 2013 2:42:32 AM

The research cruise I went on last Monday was very exciting. I woke up at 4 am and met my supervisor, Shellie.

We drove to Monterrey and went on our cruise. As we were setting up the filtering materials, we realized that we forgot to bring some tubes, but luckily some other people had it and was able to lend it to us! We took the research cruise out to three stations and took samples from each depth.

The Niskin Rosette bottles takes the water from the ocean and we sample, filter, and freeze samples we collected. It was exciting experiencing what being out in the field is like and seeing what other researchers are doing.

Niskin Rosette for water sampling Frozen DNA samples

During the week, we also did some practice DNA extractions from cultures that other people didn't need. (The cultures that we started did not grow that much). Though the DNA extraction process was very long, I definitely liked doing it. The liquid nitrogen was also very cool! The process of DNA extractions including freezing, heating, and bead beating to get the DNA separated from the other parts of the cell.