Week 3

This week was difficult for SEM. I’m a bit backed up, and SEM is time consuming. Also, I realize after this week that it’s very important to get the SEM done as quickly as possible in order to get the best results. The pictures after storage just aren’t the same. We also coordinated with forensics on the imaging of our Nile red stained plastics (see my personal picture below). They are sharing a camera for a trinocular dissecting scope. We hope to be able to image the filters with plastics and then estimate plastic contamination. It’s the first time that we’ve really branched into doing any of this kind of quantitative analysis of the contamination ourselves. It’s really interesting. We’re also working on preparations for a couple of research presentations.