The Bay of Cádiz is characterised by extensive saltmarshes a large part of which over the centuries have been transformed to salt pans (salinas) and extensive aquaculture ponds. Despite the high economic, social, cultural and biodiversity value (for avifauna) of these anthropised systems, the interest in these activities is progressively declining.

In the last year, we have been collaborating with the project FOCUS “Importance of trophic interactions in food webs for Fish and mOllusCs qUality in estuarieS” (PI: Oscar Godoy del Olmo adn Ivan Franco Rodíl) to study the flow of carbon and the interactions between different trophic levels in such an aquaculture system in order to evaluate the processes that lead to the high quality products they provide.

In this context, in our group we measure the C and N fluxes at the sediment water interface, the carbon and nitrogen content in the sediment and water column, as well as quantifying the communities of autotrophic pico and nanoplakton, microphytobenthos and bacteria.

Recently, we were interviewed by the regional TV channel interested in these systems.

https://www.canalsur.es/television/programas/conciencia/noticia/2033525.html

The project FOCUS is funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union Next Generation EU/PRTR funds.

Once more we were happy to join the rest of our colleagues from the University of Cádiz on an activity organised by the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit of our university within the framework of the European Researcher’s Night. This time we set up camp in the old town of Cadiz with all our gear. Microphytobenthos and oxygen microsensors, Winogradsky columns, fiddler crabs, Nereis worms, and our own hand-made bacteria. We also had lots of plasticine for the kids to create their own bacteria in Petri dishes and pencils for them to draw our “Secret life in the sediment drawing”. Until next time.

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Our plasticine microphytobenthos Petri dish… (microorganisms not in scale obviously!)

Sokratis explains the content of our workshop in this promotional video (in Spanish)

You can see more pictures here and our own pictures here.

The last research paper on bacteria degrading extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) produced by microalgae, published recently in Frontiers in Microbiology by our group in collaboration with researchers from the University of Essex, has attracted the attention of the media. In a small report, our PhD student Julio Bohórquez explains (in spanish) what the more relevant findings of this study are.

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