Mussel collection today

Brilliant day today, collecting mussels from Hove beach with Bekah! Lovely weather, lots of people and ….lots of mussels.

The blue mussels Mytilus edulis are widely distributed around the world, very common all around the coast of the British Isles and not listed on the IUCN red list of threatened species. Therefore our sampling today should have no impact on the environment, habitat or local populations.  We are targeting only a tiny fraction of the mussel population in the area of collection. Sampling is usually done manually at low tide, with minimum disturbance of the environment and habitats at the sampling site. We will expose the mussels to environmentally relevant concentrations of the selected EDCs and use all the tissues dissected from the exposed mussels, therefore generate zero waste. Moreover, the remaining paraffin blocks and cDNA will be stored, correctly labelled and used for future undergrad/postgrad projects.