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On SIPEX II we have a challenge of trying to sample krill through sea ice. So firstly
we have to find a way of getting to them. Now if we have got clear water we can drop
a net in, that’s fine. But if we don’t have clear water we need to make a hole in
the ice and try and pump seawater through that hole. We have two different pumps for
doing that. One is a portable one that goes out on a sled, the other is this one here,
which is a much heavier unit that pumps more water per minute. We can move about 400 litres
per minute through this pump.
By using this we can pump water containing krill and krill larvae up to the surface where
we filter them out on this screen. This separator is doing exactly the same thing that the baleen
in a whale does, it’s straining out the krill and letting the water go through. The
idea being that we produce a sample of krill that is alive and well so we can run them
in physiological experiments.
This is the first time to my knowledge that we have tried pumping using a fish pump in
the Antarctic and it’s an approach that we are exploring as experimental technique.
The key to sampling in this challenging environment is a multi-pronged approach. You’ve got
to take a whole bunch of things so you can get something that works.