Previous Photos of the Month
Below are some of the photos that have appeared on the home page and represents some of the amazing and spectacular beauty of plankton
October 2024
There has been an abundance of "jelly" this autumn, what with Muggiaea in September and currently a huge number of Obelia medusae. All examples of hydroids. On 18th October I was delighted to find and photograph for the very first time this medusa with a "top-knot" extension, a feature that I have never seen before. This aided ID using Schuchert's 2007 paper on European medusae. The hydroid species is Amphinema dinema and is about 2mm tall. By his account they are not often seen but are distributed across the eastern Atlantic from Finland to South Africa. So often medusae are colourless and transparent but this one is especially photogenic with the pinky -purple tentacles and yellow-green core. The gonads near the top are well developed too.
September 2024
Despite being photographed from a sample in August it is only in late September that I have a definitive ID for this 2mm long shrimp zoea larva. Palaemonetes macrodactyla an invasive species called the Oriental Shrimp. The confirmation came through a chain of help but eventually an expert in Decapods through the Marine Biological Association. Estuaries are the typical habitat with extreme variability in salinity which fits with the sample coming from Neyland. A common species in NW Pacific (Japan, Korea and Vladivostok coast) it first arrived in Europe in 1992 when it was found in the Thames. There are no records that I can find of it in Wales.
August 2024
Photographed 19th August 24, there was a sudden increase in protozoans especially ciliates and this amazing example is Didinium. A single cell which is 70 microns across, this is a voracious carnivore. The protrusion, top left, is like a proboscis for catching prey using strands to fire at prey. Then it can open up a "mouth" as wide as the cell to engulf the food. Normally there are 2 bands of cilia for movement but here the 4 bands suggests that it is about to divide into two new individuals.
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Photograph was taken as a short videoclip and then all the frames were extracted (245 in all) and stacked to produce a single image.
July 2024
The ctenophore Pleurobranchia pileus, commonly known as Sea Gooseberry or Comb Jelly. Photographed 14th July 24, they are common summer visitors. 1cm long they are completely transparent carnivores with the mouth on the left leading to the pharynx (red area). The combs or ctenes are the 4 columns here that rapidly beat for locomtion - more info here.
Photo is a stack of 18 images.
June 2024
Photographed on 20th June 2024. This is a young larval stage of a polychaete -a marine worm - approximately 200 microns (0.2 millimetres) in length, called a trochophore larva. Bands of cilia can be seen at the front and back, all gently moving the creature around the slide under the microscope. In front of the eye spots the apical tuft of cilia is visible. Where the body narrows to the rear is a growth zone. This is the region where the body extends and develops segments. Identifying young trochophores to species is difficult but it could well be Capitella as there were a number of later stages present in the sample and adults are abundant in the Haven living in muddy sand.
May 2024
Photographed on 9th May 2024 this is the first time I have found a living Evadne nordmanni at the Dale pontoon. These water fleas are quite different to the freshwater forms in that they are predatory. Generally they are a rarity in the Haven. Last summer a different species Podon appeared in Dale and did well for a few months before disappearing. Currently, Evadne has a thriving population off Skomer. High population densities there usually cause the eventual arrival, weeks later, of individuals in the Haven.
Photo is a stacked composite of 18 images taken with DIC lighting. In length the size is about 600 microns or 0.6mm.
April 2024
Photographed on 8th April 2024. Collected from Dale Fort Jetty a solitary specimen has appeared each April for the last two years. During this time it has been unidentified despite much effort. Finally help arrived in the form of Prof. Otto Larink (co-author of Coastal Plankton - see details at the bottom of Methods page). He correctly identified it as an early trochophore polychaete larva of the strange Knot Worm Polygordius. The larva is surprisingly large at 1-1.5mm and this is a top view. Thank you Otto.
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March 2024
The main diatom here is Corethron criophilum, one that I am always pleased to see. Not especially common in the Haven but pops up in the spring. This was in the 25th March 2024 sample when I took a stack of 25 photos to combine into one composite image. A x40 objective with DIC lighting was used. The length of the diatom is about 100 microns. The two additional cells below are Thalassiosira rotula which is beginning to bloom in the waterway. Corethron is considered an alien species, more typical of cold water like Antarctica where the highest densities are found. It is also a unique species of diatom for several reasons including having mechanically moving parts like the spines.
February 2024
During the mid-February sampling I was a little surprised to see a number of zoea crab larvae appear. While this is not particularly unusual to find zoea I have not found them so early in the year before. I rather like this photo as the larva is looking at the camera and the various spines, even the lateral ones, are visible. This is a stacked image made from 14 photos taken with a x4 objective lens on bellows mounted on a OM-1 camera. Twin flashes, the main one below and a fill in one above.
January 2024
Young Veliger larva, most likely of a Small Periwinkle Melaraphe neritoides. Approximately 200 microns across. This tiny snail lives at the top of the shore and is very abundant on the Dale Fort jetty where the samples are taken. During the last few months periwinkle eggs have been appearing in the plankton which have hatched into a ciliated ball (the trochophore stage). In December the trochophore was very abundant and now these have metamorphosed into veligers. The one pictured was photographed on 30th December and has withdrawn inside the shell. They spend only a matter of days in the plankton before settling out on to the shore. That is if they are lucky as most will drift to the wrong habitat and die before finding a suitable location.
December 2023
Forameniferans (often called forams) are a group of single-celled protists, many only known from fossils. They are essentially amoeba-type creatures that live in a shell called a "test" made from calcium carbonate. Around Dale most are very small, this one being about 120 microns in length. The tiny pores in the surface allow specialised cytoplasm from the cell to pass through to collect food. There are more than four different species appearing in these samples, some rounded others elongated. They are not abundant members of the plankton and really live in the surface sediment at the bottom of the Haven. Heavy weather in the autumn disturbs them bringing them up into the water column. During November they were especially common due to the gales. This one was photographed at the end of November.
November 2023
An isopod crustacean, Gnathia. Photographed in the sample of 17th November 2023. Almost 4mm long this is a zuphea stage-3 larva. The non-feeding female adult lives on the rocky shore and releases tiny zuphea larvae into the plankton where they actively swim to find a fish. This can take days or weeks and once attached sucks blood for a day or two before turning into a praniza stage 3 larva, sinking to the shore digest the meal over weeks. Find out more here.
October 2023
Radiolarian, Acanthometra.
This is a beautiful single-celled protist that I have not previously found in the Haven. The spicules are uniquely made of strontium sulphate (called celestite) and, like the spokes of an umbrella, hold a membrane out to create drag and reduce sinking. The membrane here was about 300 microns across, Photo graphed in the sample on 16th October 2023
Tomopteris, a predatory polychaete worm, 1cm in length, beautifully adapted to live in the open water. A completely transparent worm, very difficult to see collected off Skomer at 40m depth on 25th September 2023