Hello All!!!!
I’m Melissa and I’m the mollusc apprentice. For those of you that do not know what molluscs are they make up a phylum consisting of such animals as snails, mussels, slugs, nautilus and squids. My placement is with the National Museums Scotland. I’m not actually based at the main cite in the lovely old city of Edinburgh but rather with the collections in er.. a less beautiful location in the North of Edinburgh. Having said that, the collection is absolutely amazing! Currently there are approximately 133, 000 lots (containers of numerous individual specimens) of molluscs. This makes it the 2nd or 3rd largest mollusc collection in the UK! I am amazed at the behind the scenes work museum curators do. Not only do they maintain existing collections, they continuously work to acquire new collections, stay up to date in their scientific literature and remain accessible to the public. Did I mention that the entire marine invertebrate collection is run by 3 incredibly smart and vastly knowledgeable women? I know I should be intimidated however, they have helped me feel at ease with my new life.
Being based out of National Museums Scotland, my training started out with recording the relevant data of a donated dried shell collection. I thought this was an odd start to my apprenticeship as it mainly involved sitting at a PC most of the day recording sampling information of some of the smallest snail shells with information hand written (ugh) on incredibly small labels. Yes, this is something that museum curators do and although I’ll admit it’s not my most favourable task it does have its importance. Ultimately this assignment was helpful in bringing home the ever important message of ALWAYS having complete sampling information which is what I will remember for my eventual sampling. Additionally, being new to Scotland I may have indirectly learned Gaelic trying to attribute the many samples to the names of Scottish places ☺ Who am I kidding I’ll never figure it out.
In between registering museum samples as mentioned above, I work in the lab keying out various molluscs, a challenging task. Being based out of the museum is perfect in that regard as I have access to preserved specimens and can visually confirm my deductions (providing it doesn’t need to be dissected). I do have further plans to study with a bivalve expert in Cardiff as they are quite tricky to key out.
I have visited some local shores on a couple of occasions with a focus to familiarize myself with various shore fauna. I must add that the weather for every outdoor adventure has been amazing and I know this will catch up with me eventually. These are the days when a smile never leaves my face ☺ Additionally these excursions helped me to decide that I would focus on the marine molluscs. Given that there are estimates of approximately 85, 0000 molluscan species occupying terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments I figured it would be best to choose an environmental area to focus. Which brings me to yet another point, the apprenticeship is amazing in that you can direct it in a way that you want. Mine is particularly flexible to the point where it is a bit overwhelming. This is somewhat different to other apprenticeships where the projects are quite specific. However after lots of planning, some creative differences, countless emails and meetings I think it’s finally sorted and I am ready to go.
It’s not hard to find inspiration while an apprentice particularly through the people you meet along the way. On one occasion I had the privilege of meeting with Fiona Crouch at the St. Abb’s Volunteer Marine Nature Reserve. She is working on an amazing project called “The shore Thing.” This project was started at St. Abb’s as a means to record a handful of known shore species additionally looking at the effects of climate change by recording species distribution. The shore thing operates by involving the public to raise awareness of their marine environment. The whole existence is to learn and better our environment by getting everyday people interested in it. Sound familiar? After some training in the fall I hope to be able to train others and continue to perpetuate this amazing project.
Things are finally starting to pick up for me. I’ve just returned from a trip surveying the shores of Northern Ireland but I’ll save that for another blog. I can’t wait to get out on the shores again! I have some similar plans lined up in Scotland this October and very recently a project fell on my lap after Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) contacted the museum.
Sigh! I think that’s it for now.
I’ll aim to add pictures to my next blog 🙂 I’m having downloading issues 🙁