Woke up bright and early on day 6 of the ForBio Marine Course in Disko Island, Greenland to the beautiful sight of blue skies and the sun reflecting off the icebergs in the bay.  After a delicious breakfast the group divided up to tackle multiple tasks, which included activities such as sorting samples gathered on the Porsild trip, identifying multitudes of exciting species and a trip to an intertidal area outside the village.  After weaving our way past bands of fearsome sledge dogs aka ‘wolves’, the band of intertidal researchers arrived in a premium location for investigating life in the rocky pools, blue mussel communities and macroalgae. To observe macroalgae communities, a brave (and slightly crazy) Danish researcher (Mette Möller Nielsen) snorkeled around the coast in water with a temperature of around 3°C with icebergs as her companions.  As a safety precaution a rope was attached to her and held by a shore person, this technique was later dubbed as ‘orca fishing’ as she closely resembled a seal in her wetsuit, fortunately for her no orcas were sighted. The blue mussel expert present (Jakob Thyrring) was jubilant as the area had thousands of blue mussel specimens, which will be important for his research on understanding climatic changes in Greenland. Meanwhile, another enthusiastic researcher (Peter Kohnert) had discovered a ‘gold-mine’ of nudibranchs which will probably take the better part of the rest of the decade to identify…..but he was excited nonetheless. Once sampling had finished we enjoyed a slice of frozen bread with herring and a hot steamy cup of coffee in the sunshine whilst enjoying the beautiful views.

“Orca-fishing” with human bait…                            Sampling phytoplankton from the shore.

In the afternoon more identification of amazing arctic species ensued and terms such as chaetae, papillae, dactylus, subchela and rostrum were thrown around with abandon interrupted by the occasional cheer once someone had successfully identified one of the many cryptic species.  A small party attempted to catch some arctic fish species and phytoplankton at an amazing location dominated by large cliffs, icebergs, the occasional whale and beautiful tundra-like vegetation. Unfortunately the level of expertise in the fishing department was not quite up to scratch resulting in a catch of one piece of seaweed and little else, luckily we are here for at least another two weeks and can work on our techniques.  The phytoplankton scientists had more success, getting a large haul of the microscopic organisms.  Satisfied with our sampling success for the day we headed back to enjoy a delicious meal of local lamb and exciting presentations given by members of the team.

Pete enjoying his frozen sandwich

Till tomorrow,

Jeroen Brijs (Gothenburg University) and Jakob Thyrring (Aarhus University)

The first day of sampling did not go exactly as planned, which is more the rule than the exception when it comes to marine sampling.

The hardships of sampling -not every day comes with calm seas and bright sunshine

Due to bad weather and some technical issues with the boat it was not safe to go as far out to sea as we wanted to, but instead we stayed near the harbor in Qeqertarsuaq and took samples there. With the triangular dredge we got some macroalgae (kelps), including one beautiful species with circular holes in the leaves. This alga is a common species here, but it was new for most of the students attending the course. The roots of the kelp are a habitat for many small animals, which we picked out by hand when we got back to the lab. We also sampled mud with associated fauna, most of which was sieved on deck to wash out the animals. Some of the mud however was taken back to the lab undisturbed to look for meiofauna, small fragile species that would be crushed or lost in the sieving process. In addition to the benthic sampling we took plankton samples with a plankton-net that was dropped down to approximately 25 meters and pulled slowly back to the surface. This turned out to be not very successful probably due to high seas and small manoevering space.

Mette shows the “holey” kelp.                                  Seaweedy and muddy catch. 

Samples on deck!

The most abundant animal groups in the benthic samples this day were polychaetes (bristle worms) and amphipods (crustaceans). When we started looking at the samples under the dissection microscope the diversity of polychaete families and species were much higher than expected, and to begin with nearly every new specimen represented a new family. It was, however, very challenging to identify the polychaetes to species for many groups, because the literature and keys that are available usually only include European or Scandinavian species, but with a combination of keying and googling for local Greenlandic fauna we managed to identify a large proportion of the material.

The student group is very varied, with PhD students in fields ranging from neurotoxins and fish physiology to population dynamics and meiofaunal taxonomy. Although everyone has their own little project during the course, we all chip in with the general identification work and compiling species lists of the collected material. Even our fish physiologist, Jeroen, got to identify some polychaetes, and he was fascinated to see that what only looks like small, boring worms to the naked eye are in fact beautiful creatures when you get them under the microscope.

Making friends – there are sledge dogs everywhere!

Written by Mari (University of Bergen) and Inga (Stockholm University)