July 26, 2012
I did not know what I was getting into
So I said it would be interesting; I was wrong. It is hell. I am being overly dramatic but it’s really tough. I have to admit that I was not properly prepared for this at all. There is so much mud in this water. Even water from the surface that is nowhere near the bottom is full of sediment. I filter my water that I incubate onto a filter that is 0.2 µm mesh (really really tiny) because I want most of things that are in the water. Plankton and bacteria. Pretty much everything but the viruses. Normally I can filter about 2 liters of coastal water in about one and a half hours. The water near the mouth took forever. I had to change the filters seven times and it took 6 hours!!! Plus, only 600 ml filtered which is about a forth of what I normally can filter. This is discouraging because I need a certain about of DNA to do the stable isotope probing that I discussed earlier. Unless the biomass is really high here I don’t think my methods will work. Higher biomass (more organisms in the water) will mean more DNA is less water. But this in relatively unexplored territory so if any experiment works around this area it would be unique results that would be publishable in a scientific journal so I am going to try my hardest and tough it out. Even though sometimes I just want to quit and get some sleep for once. It’s worth my time and effort because the reward is so high. Plus what else am I going to do…