INTERVIEW – In the BioSWOT-Med cruise Loic Guillox is in charge of zooplankton sampling. Here he explains the different analyses that will be carried out later on back in the lab to assess zooplankton diversity.
THE INSTRUMENTS OF OCEANOGRAPHERS – Loic Guillox is a Study Engineer at CNRS working at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography (MIO). In the BioSWOT-Med campaign he is charge, among others, to sample zooplankton communities.
What instruments do you use to sample and study zooplankton diversity?
During the BioSWOT-Med cruise I will use nets of different mesh size in order to sample different size ranges of zooplankton.
Back to the lab, these samples will be analysed in various ways. First, thanks to zooplankton expertise a taxonomic identification and enumeration will be carried out using the stereomicroscopy.
Second, through digital imaging using the ZooScan, a device that makes digital images of zooplankton samples and can processes samples in a fast and semi-automatic way. All the images taken with the ZooScan will be stored on the MIO server for subsequent analyses.
Finally, through isotopic analyses that will allow us to assess the zooplankton diets.
Contact: Tosca Ballerini (news@swot-adac.org)