Lex
Administrator
I was gone for a week working for SEPA (Scottish Environmental Protection Agency) on a tiny Scottish island examining water near sewage outflows, out on boats in the north sea (I waved to norway/fangu but I don't think she saw me) and the Atlantic (i said burrrrrr, it was cold out there).
Basically just completely removed from civilisation, working in the field and lab absolutely non-stop. Looked at some marine phytoplankton/biofilms and their contribution to carbon production/ dissolution/ contribution to global warming, and failed two beaches because they had too high levels of E.coli, Clostridium and coliforms (which means the bacteria from human shit is falling back to the designated bathing beaches where it shouldn't be at certain times during the day).
The work itself was interesting but you can only wear wellies and be on a boat for so long before the cold gets to you. I swear we all huddled up as soon as we got back to the station that day and refused to move.
Anyway here, have a peek at a tidbit of what we did. The blue stuff is E.coli. Each dot is a colony of bacteria.
To explain that, the top 3 are from one beach, the bottom are from another beach. The leftmost used 5 0.1ml samples of pure seawater, the next was diluted by a factor of 10, the third was diluted by a factor of 10 again.
To put that into perspective, you're taking a miniscule amount of seawater from the beach, diluting it by a factor of 100 and still getting a shit load of faecal contamination. The samples from the first actually fall within satisfactory parameters for bathing, but the second doesn't. Think about that the next time you fancy a skinny dip
Bear in mind there are factors to consider such as time of day, tidal movement, tidal position, sewage outflow positions etc.
Also I'm off to continue the current re-watch of Firefly since I've been fantasising about it all week <3.
Basically just completely removed from civilisation, working in the field and lab absolutely non-stop. Looked at some marine phytoplankton/biofilms and their contribution to carbon production/ dissolution/ contribution to global warming, and failed two beaches because they had too high levels of E.coli, Clostridium and coliforms (which means the bacteria from human shit is falling back to the designated bathing beaches where it shouldn't be at certain times during the day).
The work itself was interesting but you can only wear wellies and be on a boat for so long before the cold gets to you. I swear we all huddled up as soon as we got back to the station that day and refused to move.
Anyway here, have a peek at a tidbit of what we did. The blue stuff is E.coli. Each dot is a colony of bacteria.
To explain that, the top 3 are from one beach, the bottom are from another beach. The leftmost used 5 0.1ml samples of pure seawater, the next was diluted by a factor of 10, the third was diluted by a factor of 10 again.
To put that into perspective, you're taking a miniscule amount of seawater from the beach, diluting it by a factor of 100 and still getting a shit load of faecal contamination. The samples from the first actually fall within satisfactory parameters for bathing, but the second doesn't. Think about that the next time you fancy a skinny dip
Bear in mind there are factors to consider such as time of day, tidal movement, tidal position, sewage outflow positions etc.
Also I'm off to continue the current re-watch of Firefly since I've been fantasising about it all week <3.
Last edited:
.
