Bwahaha, going back to the lab. :P
Anyway, if anyone who looked at the last batch of photos from the lab at school is looking at this, they may remember a certain large meanie crab that was shown. I mentioned that there was water flowing down the side of his tank into a touchpool, and I thought I'd show what I meant. You can see the crab sitting over on the left.
And this image shows another touchpool in the other room. The starfish near the bin there are about the size of dinner plates. They're pretty fast too. :)
Starfish legs- they're what's for dinner! =D
Now, next up is my yellow tang comparison study. The staining has certainly progressed since then, but before I started removing the scales I took some time taking microscope shots of said tang. Here's the full fish, and you can clearly see the interesting ways in which its skeleton has been structured. I'm holding it with forceps because it's covered in glycerin at the moment. :)
The next few shots aren't the greatest because I had to take them by holding the camera lens up to the dissecting microscope port. However, I personally think they're very interesting. My teacher also went crazy and paraded around the room with a very cruddy print-out of one of them. =P This first one is a shot of the tang's dorsal surface, with the lateral line and a portion of the dorsal fin structures.
Next up is the "beak" of the tang.
This is the "caudal complex" of the tang, which sports a unique spine on either side (if you look on a live tang it looks like a white spade amidst the yellow scales).
And here is a close-up of said spine. Note the lateral line that continues across the caudal complex (in many fishes it will stop before the tail).
That's all for now. ;)
The two specialties of the school are Marine Biology and medical programs (particularly nursing and physical therapy), so there are pretty extensive facilities for both those subjects. The Aquaculture and Aquarium Sciences program they started more recently just had its first graduate, but it is very popular.
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