day: 18

helllooooooooooo!

chrispy!: we ended up not having to change our zooplankton sampling technique! yay! i can't remember if i posted our method for getting the plankters, but here it is:

Field:
-Before dawn, ski out to a pre-determined destination.
-Measure snow depth with a meter stick.
-Auger a hole in the ice.
-Measure the ice depth by placing the meter stick in the hole before the water floods up.
-Use the YSI probe to get measurements at the surface, 3 m, and 6 m.
-Using the Kemmerer, get a water sample from 3 m and place in one of the Liter sized bottles.
-Repeat process with Kemmerer at 6 m.
-Repeat all steps again at dusk.

Lab:
-Filter 125 mL of lake water sample through a 36 µm plankton net in a funnel, discarding the 125 mL of water.
-Evert the 36 µm plankton net in the funnel.
-Using 25 mL of diluted 95% ethanol, cleanse the filter into a 25-mL glass vial.
-Label the vial accordingly; place in container.
-Repeat 8 times per depth sample (3 m and 6 m), per time of day (dawn and dusk). For a day of sampling, one should have 32 25-mL glass vials filled. Total, there are 96 vials to count zooplankters in.

So far, we've found a significant number of plankters in the headwaters, then the west arm, and then the island. There's also a "reverse migration in wintertime" theory we're working on :)

ANYWHO, today i woke up at 8:50 am, ate breakfast (corn pops, strawberry jellied toast, and orange juice), and went over to lab ALL day to do research! seriously, SO MUCH FUN! i love researching. THEN we did our pm zooplankton sampling at the headwaters and showered and made spaghetti for dinner! then we sat around socializing and now i'm typing this. i'm fried. tomorrow we're going lake surveying (ice depth and snow depth at pre-determined gps locations--professor is keeping track of the changes at each location). we'll be done with that by 1 pm and then we can do some more researching on zooplankton. OH! AND it's FRIDAY tomorrow! i love friday. why? because it means i can focus on my project! OH! and i'm going to do laundry because i'm running out of underwear. LOVE! <(") <--penguin!!!