Getting down and dirty with shellfish
university-of-waikato
Thu Mar 25 2010 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Getting down and dirty with shellfish
Thursday, 25 March 2010, 10:36 am
Press Release: University of Waikato
Getting down and dirty with shellfish
Summer conjures up images of sun-soaked beach holidays, but for two University of Waikato biology students it was a chance to get stuck into some serious mud.
Rebecca Gladstone-Gallagher and Lisa McCartain spent their summer holidays analysing samples of juvenile shellfish collected from three sites in Whangarei Harbour. The study was part of a wider estuarine restoration research project looking at the natural colonisation of shellfish beds by juveniles.
The students were recipients of Summer Research Scholarships, awarded annually to promising undergraduate, honours and first year masters students. They are for ten weeks and come with a $5,000 stipend for the student and provide supervisors with an extra pair of hands for their research projects.
The researchers used the sample results to calculate the rate and direction of movement of the juvenile shellfish. “The information we gathered show which shellfish bed sites need reseeding and which sites can be colonised naturally through tidal flows,” says McCartain, who spent nine months last year on a work placement at NIWA as part of her biology and earth sciences degree.
Shellfish beds play a vital role in the functioning of estuarine eco-systems, which are at increasing risk from urbanisation, agricultural and storm water run-off, industrial discharge, deforestation and soil erosion.
Most of the work involved sifting through hundreds of muddy sediment samples. “It took us a few weeks to be able to pick out the juvenile shellfish under a microscope,” says Gladstone-Gallagher, who’s partway through her biology degree. “They’re between one and five millimetres long, and to begin with it was slow work. But by the end of the project we were able to process ten samples a day.”
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The students also had an opportunity to join PhD students on fieldwork trips to Tauranga Harbour. “It was a great opportunity to find out about post-graduate work,” says McCartain. “I’m definitely interested in going on to do a Masters degree.”
The students found the summer research project was a great way to build on what they’d learned in class. “It puts what you are learning into context, and it was fantastic to actually get out into the field,” says McCartain. “It also makes you think critically and teaches you to make decisions – because things don’t always go right in research!”
ENDS
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