Students from Lipson Co-operative Academy have joined the sail training tall ship Pelican of London for the fifth annual Plymouth Ocean Science Voyage. They just about made up their bunk beds, completed initial training and had dinner, and we’re already deploying scientific equipment over night…

Our young trainees are interested in the adventure of going to sea and discovering the marine (eco)system. We are starting in the harbour where we are moored up along Mayflower Pontoon for a couple of days, inbetween basic safety training, life on board and safe climbing the main mast and yards.

Mayflower Pontoon is in the vicinity of two busy marinas of Queen Anne’s Battery and Sutton, which is also a fishing harbour, and it is used by the local ferry services. To maintain a navigable depth, maintenance dredging is undertaken sporadically.

First off is taking an environmental DNA (eDNA) sample and having a look at the water column in the harbour with our remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Our partners Applied Genomics have pre-programmed one of their InDEPTH samplers to filter water for a full tidal cycle (12.25 hours), so that we can get an overview about vertebrate (fish, marine mammals) and invertebrate (e.g. crustaceans, molluscs) communities living in and passing through the harbour.

Later at night, we deployed our blueye Robotics ROV to have a look at the inDEPTH sampler and marine life.

The next eDNA sample will be taken in Cawsand Bay. This will provide insights into a contrasting environment: a recovering seagrass meadow in a bay used by locals to moor their yachts, an anchorage for visiting boats and busy tourist spot during the summer.

eDNA analysis takes several weeks to complete and we will receive a report by Applied Genomics, which we will discuss with trainees and the A-level class at Lipson Co-operative Academy later this year.

Follow this blog for updates on what else we did to investigate the marine food web…

Many thanks to the Cattewater Harbour for supporting us during out stay in Plymouth.