Just got back on the mainland. Last month we succesfully set-up a large experiment on Derawan to look at interactive effects of hydrodynamics & turtle grazing on seagrasses. This involved building 30 cages and 15 large underwater wave-bunkers for which we almost used al the sand from the nearby sand spit. To determine the location …
Category Archives: Seagrass
CERF fieldwork trip: Manatee!
After a week of CERF-ing (Conference of the Coastal & Estuarine Research Federation) in Daytona Beach, Florida, USA, I was totally saturated with new knowledge. So a great time to go out to the field & spend a day searching for Florida seagrasses near Sebastian Inlet. Lori, our guide never saw the seagrass in such …
Last Week Shark bay & Ningaloo NP
After some long days in the field we took in the camp kitchen. Fons and Tjisse worked all night to measure the photosynthetic efficiency of the seagrasses, which resulted in this cool picture: Check the slide show for a report of our last week of research in Shark Bay. Tjisse, Fons and Leon left after …
Week 2 Shark Bay
Beautiful seagrass patterns of Sharkbay: Let the fieldwork begin! The team: Laura, me, Leon, Fons & Tjisse above the seagrass patterns The seagrass leaves of Amphibolis are still full of red pigment after the winter period and make a really beautiful underwater panorama..We were very lucky with the weather and could work in extremely calm …
Off to Shark Bay, Australia
Time for some fieldwork! This time not in Indonesia but 7 hours flying further east in Sharkbay, Australia! Together with Laura Govers, Tjisse van der Heide, Leon Lamers and Fons Smolders and researchers for the University of Western-Australia we will investigate the driving mechanisms behind the unique seagrass patterns of Shark Bay (picture below). Recently, …
Virtual Classroom: Seagrass Microscopy
The Radboud University has recently updated it’s “virtual classroom” with interesting microscopy pictures of tropical seagrasses and other submerged water plants, check it out, (Thanx Liesbeth Pierson) There is also a movie in the virtual classroom (in dutch only) to explain students what kind of research we do at the department of Environmental Science .
Paper Published in Aquatic Toxicology
After months of blog-silence I finally have some news to share: The first paper of my Phd thesis is published in Aquatic Toxicology this month.
Deep Seagrass
During our divetrip to the Similan and Surin island in the Andaman sea I found some seagrass (a Halophyla sp. >8 cross veins) growing very deep, between burrows of the shy spotted garden eels. While I know that some species are found much deeper, e.g. 50m deep (Beer et al. 1982) I was quite happy …
Seagrass workshop Thailand
I just had a great time in Phuket and Trang in Thailand were the seagrass scientists of the world gathered for 11 days for the World Seagrass Conference and the International Seagrass Biology Workshop. Here a group picture of al the people joining the ISBW inside the Emerald Cave after surviving the 80 meters of darkness …
Monitoring river input on seagrass
After 1 week of preparation the penyu team arrived at Derawan. Here Ibu Heldi invested my last payments in improving her place. Now it feels even more like home and our own research station even! In the week that my supervisors are here we revisited the seagrass meadows that they sampled in 2003. Sampling the …