After the Summer break the hunt for small snails continues. This time the museum staff got invited by Vivian Husa from the Institute of Marine Research and Erling Svensen underwater photographer and author of Marine fish & invertebrates of Northern Europe to come and help with marine biodiversity assessment in Egersund.

Egersund is a small village at the southwest side of Norway and strangely has almost no difference in height between low and high tide. The tidal range is close to zero due to the presence of a tidal node, which there are several off around the globe. This all makes Egersund a very interesting place to hunt for snails (and other marine organisms)!

Our stay was at a very special place; a lighthouse, called Viberodden (1).

The Viberodden lighthouse is build on a small island 15 minutes’ drive with boat from Egersund city center. Today it is run by the so-called Viberodden friends’ foundation (Viberodden venner). They rent out the lighthouse to be able to cover the costs for maintenance and cultural activities.  The lighthouse was originally built to secure entrance to Egersund in 1855 and has been upgraded several times since. The lighthouse was manned until 1977, when it became fully automatic. In 2007 the Viberdden friends’ foundation rehabilitated the entire lighthouse, and they are still in charge of upkeeping today. We therefore also want to thank the foundation for the hospitality and the possibility for us to use the lighthouse as a research station for the week!

Once we arrived in Egersund, Erling would be waiting for us with his boat to drive us and a whole lot of equipment to the lighthouse (2).

During the week, we grew in number of participants and eventually the team existed of a mix of researchers from different institutions and companies with a variety of backgrounds. We had with us macroalgae, Bryozoan (moss animal), Ascidian (sea squirts), sea slug specialists and more (3).

From the museum we were also representatives of several different Norwegian taxonomy initiatives (artsprosjektet).  There was “Digitization of Norwegian Bryozoans” (NorDigBryo), “Marine Amphipods: Diversity, Species Complex, and Molecular Studies” (MADAM) and of course “Lower Heterobranchia and Pyramidellidae of Norway”.

During the week we would collect several different habitats, from exposed kelp forests to blue mussel beds in the Egersund harbour. The lighthouse itself was built far out and therefore very exposed hence we were dependent on the weather for us to go out and collect. Luckily, we had a few good weather days that allowed us to snorkel while collecting samples (4).

To get our specimens we collected different habitats by using jars, nets and buckets and amazingly all our samples turned out to be rich in species (5 & 6).

 

 

While searching for snails there was a clear preference of certain species to inhabit either exposed or sheltered environments, kelp or sandy bottoms. In one case we had to brush a lot of blue mussels to get to the Pyramidellidae (Odostomia turrita) that parasite on them and on the worms (Serpulidae) that grow their houses on the outside of the blue mussel shells (7).

But we also found certain species that crawled around in the mud (8) and others that were on the kelp (9).

The days were long, and we had to do a lot of sorting of the many materials that were collected (10).

But it was very much worth it as we found a range of interesting species that we did not collect in earlier fieldtrips from this year (11 & 12).

All these new findings and collection building would not have been possible without the help of the organizers, participants and the possibility for us to stay at the Viberodden lighthouse and therefore we would like to thank Erling Svensen, Vivian Husa, Bernard Picton, Mette Eilertsen, Bjørn Gulliksen and Viberodden friends’ foundation! Thank you for a great and productive week!

-Cessa