This week Becky, and Jason students of Suzanne Dufour kindly took me on a trip across the island to look for thyasirid clams. I was prepared for cold, unsuprised by ice on the ocean, unfazed by the winch not working, but no-one told me quite how small the little blighters are.

Our largest clam was about 7mm in maximum diameter, the mean size being about 1.5mm, and the smallest (collected primarily to test Jason's microdissection skills) was about 0.5mm. The location of their field area is Bonne Bay Marine Station, which is owned by Memorial University. Usually it is the focus of University and public training sessions but in the early winter there was just us and the year-round staff. Unsuprising really with ice on the bay, air temperatures of about 2oC, and water temperatures which felt like about -1oC.

We have a new member of the ichnology group just start!

Becky Doyle has started her MSc thesis supervised by Suzanne (Dufour) studying the behaviour and sedimentary impact of chemosynthetic of burrowing by thyrasirid bivalves.  The thyrasirids are a fascinating group of bivalves adapted to live in sulphur rich fine grained sediments.  Becky has already set up some microcosm experiments to study isotopic aspects of the burrow geochemistry, and controlls on burrow morphology.

I am sure we will see much more of her work soon!