Getting Deep into DEEPEND Processing

Two of our graduate and four of our undergraduate students completed the processing for the third DEEPEND cruise! Team DEEPEND completed the processing of 300 individual shrimp specimens in a record time of 3 days! They were incredibly systematic: half of the team distributed the preserved shrimp into petri dishes, recorded carapace length and mass, and entered all the trawl and net data into the database. The other half delicately extracted all of the tail muscle tissue. Processing involves the extraction of tissue where it will later be utilized in the extraction of DNA. This will be used to study the connectivity of crustacean populations in the Gulf of Mexico to study the impact of the BP oil spill from 2010.

Later in August, graduate student Laura Timm will be embarking on the fourth DEEPEND research cruise. She will bring back another plethora of specimens to sort through, but Team DEEPEND will take care of processing the specimens in the same swiftness and efficiently to get the job done!

The species list includes:

Acanthephyra purpurea

Acanthephyra stylorostratis

Eucopia sculpticauda

Sergia grandis

Sergia robusta

Sergia splendens

Sergia tenuiremis

Stylopandalus richardi

Systellaspis debilis

Team DEEPEND: PhD candidates Laura Timm, Jorge Perez-Moreno, interns Charles Golightly, Lauren Ramos, Alyssa Morgan, Lys Isma, Elizabeth Ferrer, and research tech Blake Wilkins