by Katrina Lohan
Just as in previous trips, part of our sampling involved dissecting the bivalves and preparing tissue preps to view under the microscope. I have to admit that the microscopic metazoan parasites that I saw on this trip were not quite as exciting as previous trips—I miss the really cute turbellarians (a.k.a. Urostoma sp.)! Though they weren’t as cute, I did see some parasites through the microscope, including trematode metacercariae in the mussels, three marine mites, a handful of pea crabs and free-swimming harpacticoid copepods. I had never seen a marine mite before and at first thought there were ticks running around the lab. That’s what happens when you spend hours in front of a microscope–you forget how small the things you are viewing actually are!