Pearson College Marine Science

For the past several days the water in Pedder Bay has been the colour of milk chocolate:

The visibility is very poor as seen in the photos above and below.

Brown, brown water!

In the photos below, the jar on the left contains tap water while the jar on the right contains water collected off the Pearson College docks at 12:30 pm today by filling the jar from the surface water.

The brown colour of the water is actually not chocolate, but is in fact due to an abundance of  an as yet unidentified plankton species. Below are photos taken through a compound microscope:

Amongst the many, many little ciliates that were zipping around the field of view, there were a few Parafavella sp. (the little champagne glasses), a dinoflagellate species (Peridinium perhaps?) and the occasional rotifer (one even had eggs).  The sample was clearly dominated by the brown coloured ciliate, however.  If you have any idea about the species (based on these terrible photos or from experience with the ciliates of Pedder Bay), please help with the identification!!

In addition to the microscopic organisms, there has been an abundance of small (1-1.5 cm) Polyorchis penicillatus jellies around the Pearson College docks.

Sorry about the terrible quality of the photos!  For more information on Polyorchis penicillatus (and a much better photo!) see the page from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Tags: ciliate, jellyfish, Parafavella sp., Pearson College dock, Pedder Bay, plankton, plankton bloom, Polyorchis penicillatus, turbidity

This entry was posted on June 21, 2012 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Marine organisms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.