These meetings were indoor ones at Les Curtis' house, we spent the afternoons looking at samples of marine life from Port aux Malades and the QE II Marina pontoons through microscopes.

We looked first at life growing on the marine lichen Lichina pygmea and found many examples of the little bivalve Lasaea rubra. We also saw Spirorbis tube worms with their tentacles expanded and looked at the currents produced by the cilia on the tentacles.

Tube Worm Spirorbis sp.

From the marina we looked at the structure of two different red algae growing on the pontoons, one of these photographed below, and saw many species of diatoms.

Red alga Plocamium cartilagineum

Red alga Plocamium cartilagineum

Diatoms

Diatoms

Diatoms

Diatoms

Diatoms

Diatoms

The most exciting diatoms were colonies of Baccilaria paxilifera which move by the straight cells sliding past each other.

Baccilaria paxilifera

We also found two species of microscopic brown algae, these had many nauplii, the earliest larval stage probably of copepods, swimming around them.

Brown Alga

Brown Alga

We found colonies of an Ectoproct Pedicellina sp. which none of us had seen before. They looked like animated drumsticks, bending around on their hairy stalk. Under high power the cilia could be seen beating on their Lophophore (tentacles).

Pedicellina sp.

Pedicellina sp.