Coral reefs in Jobos Bay (National Estuarine Research Reserve) are under duress by anthropogenic as well as by natural stressors. The main purpose of this project is to implement the FORAM Index and to determine which factors play a seasonal role in the water quality of the reefs. This project is funded by Puerto Rico Sea Grant.
WHAT DO WE HAVE?
Dr. Martínez-Colón's laboratory is located in room 315, FSHSRC building and is fully equipped to perform foraminiferal, microplastic, and heavy metal research.
Some gadgets that we have:
fume hood
furnace for Loss-on-ignition (TOC and CO3)
Presens microsensors for foraminiferal culture work
Meiji and Olympus binocular microscopes (4)
Meiji trinocular microscope (1)
Zeiss epifluorescence microscope with video camera (1)
Zeiss Axio Observer inverted fluorescent microscope (1)
metal sieves for dry/wet sieving
plastic sieves for heavy metal dry sieving
plastic and teflon foraminiferal culture devices
environmental chambers for foraminiferal culture work
sea water filtration system
push coring equipment
core extruder
field porewater extraction instruments
microplastic gravity separator
foraminiferal taxonomy books
Dr. Martínez-Colón's laboratory collaborates and shares equipment with Dr. Ashvini Chauhan's Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory for microbiome work (e.g., gene sequencer, etc.) and the School of the Environment's Core Research Laboratory for heavy metal analysis instrumentation (e.g., ICP-OES, Hg-analyzer, etc.).
One of our six scopes in the lab.
Epifluorescence microscope
Inverted fluorescent microscope (Zeiss Axio Observer)
Do not do this at home.
Push core gadget
Push core from Puerto Rico
Field based extraction
Petit ponar