A few of my favourite darkfield stills from this week’s plankton sample from the pier. A Müller’s larva (Turbellaria), a polychaete trochophore (not sure which stage), and a chain of diatoms Amphitetras antediluviana. #marineplankton 🦑

Check out this handsome beast! A mysid (opossum shrimp) from Happisburgh beach in Norfolk. Thanks to @adameykolab.bsky.social for the ID help! #marineplankton 🦑

Current view

A polychaete (bristle worm) trochophore (young larva) from the top down. #marineplankton 🦑

Morning! It’s a choppy one today on the coast of north Norfolk!

A very stretchy and excitable Trematode worm! This is a parasitic flatworm. #marineplankton 🦑

Almost harvest time I think!

Some photos from today’s @quekettmicroscopicalclub meet at the beach! A fish larva, a comma shrimp, and a red seaweed I can’t remember the name of! #marinebiology 🦑

Does anyone know what this is? A trochophore? Planula? It’s a larval stage of something and I neeeeed to know! It was pretty big (bigger than an anthozoan planula) and cylindrical. #marineplankton 🦑

Wow! All the spaces on the zoom meet for the citizen science project intro have all gone! But don’t worry, I’ve added extra spaces so you can still reserve your spot! 🦑🧪 #marineplankton #citizenscience

As some of you may know, I run The Plankton Project, and I'm excited to announce that I'm ready to launch the microscopy-based citizen science project (UK)I've been talking about all year! I'm holding a Zoom meeting on 6 August at 6pm if any of you would like to find out more #citizenscience 🦑🧪

This may look like a old leathery insole, but this cutie is a baby cnidarian! Cnidaria is the phylum that includes stingy things like jellyfish, sea anemones, coral, and hydroids. This is a planula larva of probably a sea anemone. #marineplankton 🦑

Loving the funky moves of this Chromadoria (Subclass) nematode worm. #marineplankton 🦑

It’s a bit windy on sample day today! #marineplankton 🦑

There were lots of these very striking Turbellarian flatworms in my weekly plankton sample this week. They really jazzed up the Petri dish! #marineplankton 🦑

I had a wonderful time at @northamptonshirenhs microscopy group meeting today, where I had the privilege of doing a presentation about marine plankton, and sharing a live sample with them! Here are some of the organisms we saw. #marineplankton 🦑

I don’t see diatom genus Petroneis very often, so when I do, it’s a treat! #marineplankton 🦑

There is something so delicious about this photo. It reminds me of gummy bears! My plankton sample this week was soooo busy, full of zooplankton - bristle worm larvae, copepods and copepod nauplii, barnacle nauplii, appendicularians… #marineplankton 🦑

I’ve never seen this before! A ostracod eats a polychaete larva. The first half of the video is real time, and the second half is a timelapse. It’s a bit gnarly to watch the larva wiggle about whilst being eaten alive! #marineplankton 🦑

If you study plankton, you’ll definitely come across polychaete (bristle worm) larvae, and today is a great day to recognise them, because it’s International Polychaete Day! #marineplankton 🦑 #wormwednesday

Yes I have! Not very often, so it’s super exciting when I do! I’ve added my fav photo (a stack) of one I found last year.

Oh Wells-next-the-Sea, you never let me down! I don’t sample at wells quay very often (it’s quite a way from me), but when I do I see things I don’t see anyway else! Like this urchin larva. What a beauty! #marineplankton 🦑

Ran a #marineplankton workshop today! I think it went very well ☺️ #scicomm 🦑

You know I love ‘new-to-me’ species! Thanks to @microbe_guru for the ID! This is a little dinoflagellate called Blixaea quinquecornis. #marineplankton 🦑

Good morning! Sample day! #marineplankton 🦑

Tonight’s swim was fun! We were booped constantly by sea gooseberries and delighted sporadically by moon jellies! Check out this dedicated moon jelly I found on the beach. It was paper thin and had a little fish still attached! #marineplankton 🦑

Good evening from Norfolk! A gentle sea, and blue skies here.

This week’s sample was heaving with copepod nauplii! Here’s just a few. #marineplankton 🦑

Lots of Peritrichia (stalked ciliates) in this week’s plankton sample, including Zoothamnium, Cothurnia, and Vaginicola. #marineplankton #protistsonsky 🦑