Mediterranean fish larvae, Drifting In Situ Chamber and me ... a love story
by Agathe Blandin, on
For my first year of MSc internship, I had the opportunity to be part of the PUF project and the partnership between the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and the Ocean Observatory of Villefranche-sur-Mer. The aim of my study was to gather the first dataset of orientation abilities of post-flexion Mediterranean fish larvae by using the mini-DISC, an instrument developed at RSMAS. After setting up that that transparent floating and drifting structure with the help of Claire Paris and Cédric Guigand, from RSMAS, we have been able to detect and quantify the orientation of 3 common Mediterranean species : Boops boops (the bogue), Spicara smaris (the picarel) and Spondyliosoma cantharus (the black seabream). Yeepy !!
Being on the field to deploy the DISC was a huge experience and a privilege, even if it was not easy at the beginning (due to a rough Mediterranean Sea). I took great pleasure in discovering all of the technologies developed for this project and in learning how to work with it.
There are still a lot of work to do and thanks to that experience, I can say that I am motivated in helping progressing science in that field of research.
This internship was full of discoveries and I thank my two supervisors Jean-Olivier Irisson and Robin Faillettaz for their patience, their trust and for having been so present during these 2 months.
