Unboxing the Manta
Great news! The manta trawl – a key piece of equipment we’ll need for our surface water sampling in Okanagan Lake – arrived today, all the way from Southern California! We’re really grateful for the speediness of our colleague, Dr. Marcus Eriksen, with The 5 Gyres, who got this in the mail overnight to us.
Mimic Nature For Best Results
What is a “manta trawl” you ask? Well, think of a manta ray and you’ll have a good idea as to what it looks like and what it’s doing in the water. Similar to a manta ray, the trawl will skim the very surface layer of the water, propelled forward by the movement of the boat it’s attached to. The mesh on this net is very, very small (0.335 microns, or 0.000335 millimetres!) so it should do a good job at catching microplastics (if they’re there!). Microplastics, as we’ve learned, are any plastic particles less than 5 millimetres in size.
For more on manta rays and microplastics, check out this audio documentary from the BBC, all about studying the way mantas move and operate to come up with solutions for capturing microplastics in wastewater treatment plants before they get out into our watery environments.
Now that we have the manta, it’s time to find a boat and get on the water!
Recent Comments