Lyle UR We struck PLASTIC

This week has been a great week for me and for science. On Saturday I went out and gathered some samples for my research from four different sites in the Inter-coastal water way. It was a beautiful day out on the water. It was about 10:30 by the time I got out there which was good because it was on an outgoing tide and when gathering oysters it is easier to reach them when the tide is out.

Me at the first sampling site

I had to wait until Wednesday to actually get into the lab and get a first glimpse of the oysters under a microscope. Dr. Woodall had set me up with the microscope and an extra light to make sure that I could see soemthing if there was anything unusual in my sample. Dr. Woodall didn't think that I would find spherical micro beads, she thought if anything I would find micro fibers (MF) if anything. Well about Ten minutes into looking at an oyster under the microscope, EUREKA,  I found a piece of what I thought might be a MF. I called for Dr. Woodall to come to take a look and she got so excited that I really had found one. After the excitement calmed down a little bit we got the MF over to the computer that way we could get a photograph of it. I still can not believe that I found MF in the oyster. Oh, and I didn't just find one piece of MF, I found Seven pieces in the one oyster.I could not be any happier and sad at the same time right now. Happy that I actually found something but kind of sad that there is MF in our beautiful waters. There is still so much work that needs to be done after finding this. This was also only the first site that I had sampled. I still have three other sites that I sampled from and I am expecting the same results from those sites.

The first MF found!!!!!!!!