A fine banner for outreach events! #scicomm 😆🧪 Thanks @jbeston.dev for the design.

Son has just convinced me to do a 4 mile hike tomorrow 😬

2 sides of me appeared in dreams last night. 1) I absolutely destroyed 3 home invaders with a broken toilet brush, and 2) I was filled with shame for not checking out of a hotel room on time and my packing never seemed to end. This is basically my life 😆

My samples are still full of tintinnid ciliates! This one is poking out of its lorica to show us its lovely single-celled body. #marinebiology #zooplankton #microscopy #plankton #ciliates

This morning, whilst enjoying a boiled egg, I texted my mum asking if she fancied a knitting project that I’d love some ’Jane’ hats (Firefly) to keeps my eggs warm. This afternoon she sent me this photo…!

A drippy sample session today! #marineplankton 🦑

Gorgeous! #marineplankton

Too much gush? Nah! Never enough priase for hubs @jbeston.dev www.linkedin.com/posts/elizab...

@aliceahorton.bsky.social on the women who inspired her Discover more about the Women in Science at the MBA - www.mba.ac.uk/celebrating-... #WomenInScience #WomenInConservation #InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience

Arrow worms (Chaetognatha) are predators of the plankton! They use the powerful spines around the jaw to capture their prey, and we have a rare view of an arrow worm using those jaws to try and eat a hydroid! Second part of video is timelapse #marineplankton 🦑

Opportunity for Early Career Marine Researchers... The Brian Morton Exchange Fund provides support for a research exchange at the MBA, or partner research institutions in Hong Kong or The Azores.  👉https://mymba.mba.ac.uk/member-homepage/discounts-and-bursaries/brian-morton.html

A fabulous talk from Ben at @therockpoolproject.bsky.social on zoom this afternoon! 🦑 Check out this amazing citizen science project if you haven’t already!

A relaxing little eggy from a recent plankton sample. #marineplankton 🦑

Do anyone else’s cats demand a ‘ham tax’ upon human use of the kitchen? i.e. If you want to use the kitchen, the cats must be paid in meats or cheeses?

Ooooh! A new thing! This is a parasitic copepod from the order Siphonostomatoida. I’m thinking it’s from the family Pennellidae - if anyone can help me get it to genus I’ll be very grateful! #marineplankton 🦑

The giant plankton net of facts is pretty much done! #marineplankton 🦑

Something ate through my giant plankton net! 😫. Luckily this is just a prop for sci comm, so time to get the sewing kit out and watch more figure skating.

Just watched Spielberg’s War of the Worlds for about the tenth time. I’m still tense for 100% of the movie. Love it!

Which events will you all be tuning in to in the Winter Olympics? I’ll be trying to watch the figure skating, skeleton, and maybe the ski jumping.

I do like a nice bit of figure skating. To watch. I did used to skate, but described as an ‘elephant on ice’ by my tutor. It was an accurate description.

A male Centropages hamatus copepod under UV light. #marineplankton 🦑

When you ask your designer husband to write one simple word on a blackboard… @jbeston.dev

Sorting through some images today I came across a ciliate I’d forgotten all about! This flabby little fella is Campanella sp. #marineplankton 🦑 #protistsonsky

Apple Music is selecting some 80’s bangers for me this morning. 🕺

More fun with UV! This polychaete larva proved to be a great subject to experiment with my new UV torch! The setae (the ‘hairy’ bits) are particularly striking. #marineplankton 🦑

My first ever UV microscopy image! This is a Halacaridae mite, but I think it might just be an exoskeleton. It glowed gloriously under the UV light source! #marineplankton 🦑

A VERY windy and cold plankton sample this morning! I couldn’t keep yhe phone still! #marineplankton 🦑

And this is why sea urchins are classed as bilaterally symmetrical (see also sea stars etc)

One from the archives. A sea urchin larva moving very gracefully across my slide. Did you know sea urchins started life like this? #marineplankton 🦑

Another glorious image of a larger marine organism than I usually share - a plumose anemone from Plymouth. 🦑

Do you remember when ‘old’ ladies dressed like the Queen and had a shampoo and set every week like they did when they were young in the 1940s and 1950s and were totally unrelatable? Now ‘old’ ladies dress like the vanilla 1990s, which means…I’m old. Shit.

Just to cheer myself up, a blue-rayed limpet from Scotland last year.

I never tire of seeing polychaete larvae displaying their setae. Just stunning! #marineplankton 🦑

Good morning! Not sampling today, but still enjoying the rolling waves of Norfolk.

Not a great stack, but it gives you an idea of the glorious architecture of a Lagena sp. Foraminifera. #marineplankton 🦑 #protistsonsky

The most beautiful #snail ever to exist! Many #marine snails go through an early life stage called #veliger, wherein they drift along with the #plankton before settling onto the sea floor as an adult. We call this, #sparkles #blackwater #blackwaterdiving #mollusk #gug

January is always a tricky time of year for marine biologists here in the UK… but we’d love to see your fieldwork in action! Share your photos with us this year! #FieldWorkFriday

Bluesky posts you’ve seen in dreams. “Hens, ten feathers apart”

A lovely couple of eggies! I found both of these is yesterday’s plankton sample. Both are filmed in time lapse. #marineplankton 🦑

Hundreds of Tintinnina in my plankton sample this week #marineplankton 🦑

Dreamt about a jellyfish that could morph itself to imitate a duck. This needs to exist in a sci-fi novel.

Thousands of lion’s mane jellyfish have washed into the shallows and on to the sand across Port Phillip Bay, from Altona in the west to Blairgowrie on the Mornington Peninsula, Australia. Photographer and ocean swimmer Rodney Dekker captured video of the incredible sight. 🪼

The X-Files is not a good recruitment video for scientists. They’re either always a) evil, or b) dead.

THIS ⬇️

This is how it should always be for mental health services. It's an emergency, caught in time, it doesn't have to become a living nightmare.

Question - why do cats insist on vomiting atop of stuff (like cables or paperwork) instead of on the plethora of clear surfaces available to them?

Sample day! #marineplankton 🦑

Pretty little shard (mineral?) #marineplankton 🦑

The larva of a shrimp (Caridea). #marineplankton 🦑

I've taken quite some sediment samples and it's as if I've been either blind all this time or #foraminifera have suddenly flourished. #sediment #citizenscience #protists #amoeba