Marine Science work placement with SEACHANGE
Posted on 29/09/2022 By: Rada Pandeva
SEACHANGE’s main goal is to investigate how marine biodiversity has been impacted over time by looking specifically at Icelandic clams - the longest-lived animal known to science. The clams are used to quantify the anthropogenic impact on the marine environment by tracing back time.
It all sounded incredibly fascinating to me when I heard two of the project’s PhD students, Jane and Zoe, talk about it during an event back in March 2022. The way they described the project inspired me to get involved and so a few days later I was already in the lab and Jane was showing me how to use a sieve to extract the foraminifera (single-celled marine organism) from a sediment sample from the North-Icelandic Shelf.
The North-Icelandic shelf is one of the regions SEACHANGE scientists visited to collect shell samples (in total, 22 000 bivalve Arctica mollusks were collected) during their 28-day cruise on board the RRS Discovery from April until May 2022. They also collected shallow sediment cores in the North Sea and North Atlantic.
During my work placement, I learned how to identify different types of foraminifera, use a special software which generates 3D models of the sample, and I also had the chance to look through some diatom slides which is my favourite type of phytoplankton (photosynthesizing marine organism), so you can imagine my excitement! All those activities gave me an invaluable insight into one of the many work components of a project funded by the ERC (European Research Council) Synergy Grant Scheme. Building essential skills for my career as a marine scientist by partaking in a project of this caliber has been invaluable.
Said skills I acquired working with SEACHANGE will help me greatly as I work on my own project over the next two years - The Thalassophile Project, which was recently awarded Erasmus+ funding. It will focus on making Marine Science accessible to D/deaf and visually-impaired people by developing a central resource hub, curating what there already is and creating where
there are gaps.
As a first-year undergraduate student, I felt incredibly honoured and empowered to be a part of such an impactful venture, working alongside PhD students and professors. I learned a lot and I look forward to hopefully continuing to contribute over the remaining four years of the SEACHANGE project
