Yealm aventure - photo galerie

The Cytosub flow cytometer involved in this adventure is at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) and is used by Dr Glen Tarran. This is the prototype CytoSub and was developed through a UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Autosub Special Topic Award between Prof. Peter Burkill at PML and Dr. Alex Cunningham at the University of Strathclyde. The project was called SSCAPA – Sub-surface Cell and Particle Analysis (Project # GST/02/2153) and ran between 1998 and 2001.

The opportunity of mooring the Cytosub in the river Yealm was made possible by local oyster farmers Martin Oates and Steve Allen. They kindly offered use of their boat to transport the CytoSub to a mooring buoy in the Yealm estuary.

First, oysters had to be collected.

Cytosub was cheked,

prepared for deployment,

and fixed to a buoy in the middle of the estuary for 48 hours.

During this time, we took seawater samples using a small inflatable boat in order to measure temperature and salinity variations and also preserved samples to quantify phytoplankton and bacteria using conventional flow cytometry.

Of course, we learned to injoy tea time...