The Salty Microcosmos – 1

May 05, 2018 • 1:42 PM UTC

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Microorganisms

Ronak Hati

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About a month ago had visited a beach at Juhu, Mumbai. The reason was a talk at Prithvi theatre – Chai and Why? I hope most of the Mumbai-residents here might know about it. So after the talk, went to Juhu beach and collected some sea water. It was wonderful to have seen such a clean beach.

The sea water was collected in a plastic bag (superuser Mitali might know….) and is being stored in a plastic bottle. Initially I withdrew some sample directly from the bottle and observed. All I got to see were some sand grains.

Quite interesting shapes and patterns they have on them, don’t they? I wonder how and why they have these.
My initial expectations were to get to see some protozoans. However found no sign of any living organisms in the initial mounts. Later took some of the sea water into a tray and using the magnifier began looking for any sign of movement. That’s when I came across these creatures referred to as zooplanktons…
.

The water was full of krills as was observed!

It was fun to keep watching those tiny little krills swimming around. I used mobile flashlight to be able to observe them. To observe better, I placed the light source below and lo! All the krills were getting attracted to the light source and swimming around it. There there, I got a way to be able to pick them up easily from the water. I placed some on a watch glass and attempted to keep light source away from the water. Found them to try and jump out of the water in watch glass.
Finally after some playtime, I observed one of these under foldscope. It did not show any movement whilst on the glass slide.

While experimenting with light, I found another creature that preferred to stay at bottom. In the video, it may look like an omlette with a black centre.

Very carefully picked it up using a Pasteur pipette and prepared a mount on PVC slide. This one chose not to stay still.

A little while later when I observed it I found that it shed its exoskeleton. It seems as if this is a larva of some organism. Please let me know the identity if anyone can identify it.

Some more time later, it became totally stationary, except for its arms (arms or whatever it is called, please let me know) which revealed to have several rows of cilia on them. Notice how it creates a water current. Definitely this is how it feeds itself.