This
OSD sampling was the first one for the Department
of Biology here at the University of Padova. Having as a logistic base our hydrobiological
station in Chioggia, in the southern part of the Venice Lagoon, we decided
to sample two different sites. The first one was “Palude della Rosa” (OSD site
47), in the northern part of the lagoon, a shallow eutrophic salt marsh pond
which is considered one of the best preserved remnant of the ancient lagoon
ecosystem. The second one (OSD site 48) was located around 2 miles away from
the coast in the Gulf of Venice.
We
moved from the hydrobiological station at around 8:30 am (local time) in a
sunny day and all the expedition took place in a quiet and pleasant sea. Since
the dimension of our boat, all the filtering steps, both for sampling and
chlorophyll measurement, were done by hand. As previously supposed, we were
able to filter only a small volume of water for each site, ranging from 360 ml
per filter in the lagoon to 600 ml per filter in the open sea. We are anyway
confident that Jack at the Argonne National Laboratory will be able to extract
enough DNA from the filters!
In less
than 5 hours we were back to Chioggia, where Vito and Andrea, technicians of
the hydrobiological station, took care of some metadata and, of course, of the
boat. Instead, Fabio, Riccardo and myself, with the filters and the water for
nutrient measurement preserved in dry ice, moved to Padova. It has to be
noticed that nutrient and chlorophyll measurement will be performed by Dr.
Chiara Facca from the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Venezia,
which collaborates with us for metadata production.
See you
at the next Ocean Sampling Day!!
Alessandro
Vezzi, Coordinator of OSD Sites 47 and 48.
Palude
della Rosa, OSD sampling site 47. Picture was taken from the boat while
filtering, and shows a fishnet and behind it the Isle of Torcello.
The
hydrobiological station of the Department of Biology, located in Chioggia.
