@ScienceForMyMum In this section you can see copies of my social media posts from @scienceformymum on Instagram . Please follow along if you have the app in support of my work. Originally started as a science communication outreach project for my Masters Degree, this has quickly proved popular with a following over 50,000 followers. The root of the name 'scienceformymum' comes from video blogs I used to send to my mum (who is not a scientist) to give her a glimpse of my days in the lab, and these clips that I recorded 'for my mum' evolved into the posts and reels you can see now. Once I began to post publicly it seemed to reinforce my belief that our science should be communicated in a way that anyone can understand ... even my mum!

marine biology, oceanography, climate science, science communication, science journalism, research, phd, fieldwork, university of oxford, carbon cycle, plankton Entry 08 February 25 2025 Our first CTD, swath bathymetry system and laying moorings. Oh how I've missed these deployments Today brought with it our first CTD! Through we weren’t looking to sample our full smorgasboard of filtering delights, it was very exciting to see that depth profile for the first time on this cruise, and allowed us to do a number of tests through our respective rigs to get a feel for filtering speed and biomass. ‘Filtering’ is not actually as straightforward as it sounds – there are a number of factors at play and it’s important to find a happy medium to get high quality samples. In my case, I need to sample enough volume to collect a high enough biomass to enable me to do genetics analysis, but I also need to make sure this happens quickly enough that the DNA and RNA doesn’t degrade. With that in mind, it takes time to push my samples through the filters – and this time increases with the amount of plankton in the water. So I need to have the pressure high enough that I can filter enough volume in a short enough time, without causing excessive shear stress that either dismantles a) my filtering rig, or b) the plankton I’m collecting! There aren’t really hard and fast rules about any of these things, it mostly comes with experience, which is why having days like this is so useful, as it enables us to trial run all these things. back to diaries home page In the afternoon it was time to put the first set of moorings in. These are a really awesome deployment – essentially a 4.3 km stretch of wire lined with various instruments such as temperature loggers and current meters. We lay them out over about four hours, horizontally on the surface so you can see them stretching behind us for miles. At the same time the ship’s swath bathymetry system continually maps the seabed to assess the best place to drop the mooring. Once the whole length is laid out, the bottom (ie the end still on the ship) is attached to an old anchor chain, and on the order this is dropped to the bottom of the ocean. As this happens the whole 4.3 km of mooring essentially moves towards you as it follows the anchor down to the bottom of the ocean, and is now totally vertical in the water. Overall this system measures temperature and currents in the water, and will be recovered in a couple of weeks, along with its data. previous entry next entry

marine biology, oceanography, climate science, science communication, science journalism, research, phd, fieldwork, university of oxford, carbon cycle, plankton Entry 11 February 28 2025 'Drifting over the Lake District in an airship at a height of 3000 metres and trying to drop a rock onto a barn roof. At night' ~ Chief Scientist Jonathan Sharples Having transited overnight to our ridge site, we arrived around 0400 and immediately set about getting the CTD in the water. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get it out before dawn but it was a good day to have a bit of a play with methods - I was able to try out my new filtering rig, with the consensus being that you cannot filter 5L of seawater through a 0.2um filter under vacuum (at least, not in less than 5 hours!). So, lesson learned (the long way). Filtering in hand, it was time to measure some chlorophylls - we were measuring total and size-fractionated chlorophyll, to enable us to understand the structure of the phytoplankton community in the water. We measure this with a spectrophotometer, once the filters have been in acetone for around a day after sampling. This measures the absorbance of light through the sample, from which we can understand how much of the chlorophyll pigment was present in the original filter. Today we also dropped our second mooring – this time on the ridge. This works much the same as the first (see 25th Feb entry) except now we’re trying to drop the anchor on a specific location on this underwater mountain range. To quote our chief scientist, Jonathan, ‘it’s a bit like drifting over the Lake District in an airship at a height of 3000 metres trying to drop a rock onto a barn roof. At night.’ These two sets of moorings, together, will enable us to observe differences between the two sites – on and off the ridge. In the evening (or, our version of evening, which is essentially 4-5pm) we were lucky enough to witness a part of the planetary parade - seeing Venus, Jupiter and Mars while the wirewalkers were deployed over the side. back to diaries home page previous entry next entry

marine biology, oceanography, climate science, science communication, science journalism, research, phd, fieldwork, university of oxford, carbon cycle, plankton Entry 09 February 26 2025 Wirewalkers and gliders. Green tape, parafilm, and a power drill ~ can you tell what it is yet? Another dawn CTD, but this time a full run-through, enabled us a dress rehearsal for our long-anticipated pre-dawn. Sampling went off without a hitch (surprisingly there is not a huge amount of competition for sampling at 0400!), and while my samples were running I decided to embark on a DIY project to see if I could optimise my filtering set up. As a minimum I have 12 samples to do at a time, and only 6 lines on my inline peristaltic pump set up, so I wanted to try my hand at constructing a manifold vacuum filtering rig, which would give me an additional 6 sample slots. With some help from a power drill, my trusty green tape and lots of parafilm (if you know, you know), I had a pretty neat-looking rig assembled. Happy to see my filters turning green, I soon had my first full set of genetics samples safely tucked away in the -80. Happy scientist. Today I also had a couple of ‘phone home’s, which was very comforting. It can be hard watching your life carry on without you. Another call was made to discuss sample processing and analysis; a collaboration with one of my lab postdocs for whom I’m collecting samples. Finally I spoke with one of my supervisors so they could live vicariously through my porthole view from the chemistry lab! Most gratifying as well as encouraging. Choose your supervisors with care, a supportive one is priceless. In the evening we were able to watch another couple of deployments - the wirewalker and glider. The wirewalker contains similar sensors to the CTD, and it works by allowing the main body to be ratcheted up and down the wire by wave action on a surface float attached to it, measuring a number of parameters including the temperature and salinity of the water as well as the chlorophyll in the water. We'll leave it out here, profiling about twice an hour, and collect it in around 3 weeks. After the wirewalker we deployed a glider - another of my favourite 'yellow toys' as they are affectionately called (think - Boaty McBoatface!). The gliders are free-moving - not attached to a chain or buoy - and have much more control over their movement. They can alter their buoyancy to change their position in the water, and move forward and backwards. They also measure temperature, salinity and chlorophyll, amongst other things, sending some of this data by satellite, and keeping some of it locally for us to unpack upon recovery. back to diaries home page previous entry next entry

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marine biology, oceanography, climate science, science communication, science journalism, reseach, phd, fieldwork, university of ocford, carbon cycle, plankton Entry 13 March 02/03 2025 Another day another CTD. -80 degrees, lunch time naps and a fishing trip. Today was definitely the craziest day we've had so far - and on a Sunday too. Alarms went off at 02:45am, which is feeling pretty normal by now, and we headed down to the main lab to watch the CTD profile as it went down. Whilst my filters were filling (15L per line takes me about 1.5hours), we filtered samples for SEM, which will allow us to visualise, count and identify our plankton to get an idea of their diversity and community changes over physical gradients. Having snap frozen my samples, stored them down in the -80, and acid-rinsed my carboys, I finished up my first shift around 10:00am. Then it was time to convince my body to sleep again (in fairness, it had been working for 7 hours), to store up a few hours in anticipation of the next night shift. I resurfaced just before dinner (or is it breakfast? I've lost track) and checked in with the day shift crew as their evening CTD went down. Once it was back on deck it was time for the affectionately named ‘fishing trip’. This is the deployment of the Tow-Fish, the sampling device that will supply us with trace-metal clean surface seawater straight to our RN container, so we can do our 120-hour nutrient addition experiments. We took the Fish out of her box and re-applied the electrical tape we had so diligently removed (oops!), and before long it was time to get her up into the air and over the side. With the help of Tina, Paul P and Richie (NMF Techs and the real stars of the research cruise show), as well as crew members Burt and Andy, we managed to get the Fish in the water whilst the captain ramped the ship up to 5 knots to flush through the system. This was the most exciting moment of the cruise so far for me, and I'm so pleased to say the whole thing went off without a hitch in the end. We have an ongoing joke that this is our experiment when it’s going well, and my experiment when it’s not (or when it's keeping us up at unsociable hours), but all joking aside, this is really my baby and I am super excited to have it underway. We'll hopefully have three 5-day experiments over the next few weeks, which should give us temporal and spatial resolution of nutrient limitation and co-limitation across the South Atlantic Once the Fish had flushed through for a few hours, it was time to get down to the business of filling bottles, taking T0 samples and spiking with nutrients, which took us 'til around 0200. Dropping the bottles into the on-deck incubator was an extremely satisfying moment. Add another few hours of filtering, fixing and freezing and it was a 0400 bedtime for us, making this a 25-hour shift in total (with a little lunchtime nap). I'll see you tomorrow, not too early though. back to diaries home page previous entry next entry