By Olivia Walker
Being an intern and working alongside Dr. De Mutsert, Adam Murray, Sara Marriott, and my fellow intern Grace Cuevas has been an amazing experience. As an intern my duties included catching the Grass shrimp, testing their water to get the values for the experiment, and feeding the shrimp.
The day began with us going shrimping to collect 1000 grass shrimp. We used a kick net which helped us move the grass out of the way to collect the shrimp. While using the net we also caught some crabs, fish, and snails. Once we finished collecting the shrimp, we separated them into the tanks.
To start testing the water in each tank we used a machine called the YSI, to operate it we placed the wand into the tank, and it would send the data back to a digital part of the device. This gave us the values we needed which included temperature, salinity, and DO%.
Feeding the shrimp was an easier part although we did have to calculate the amount of food to go into the tanks. So, for that we took the amount of shrimp in each tank and multiplied that by the average weight. Once we got that number, we multiplied it by 10% because the shrimp were only able to consume 10% of their wet weight.
After having this experience, it has shown me what working in this type of field might involve, ranging from working in the field to collect the species you are studying to collecting data in the lab which is used to further the experiment for the future.
Coastal and Estuarine Fish Ecology 