Profile

Sometimes marine species are menaced in their environments and they need a little help to survive! If we understand how they live and which conditions they like we can not only have them growing happily in aquariums, but we can also protect the ones that live in the wild!

I work with tiny stalked barnacles that are eaten in Portugal and Spain (yes, eaten!!! Apparently they are very tasty too!), trying to convince them to  grow in our aquariums, so that they are so happy that they will mate and reproduce with each other (yes, they need to get it going!!!)…and we can have zillions of baby new ones! I then investigate how to make the little ones happy…so that they will become big adults that are happy and like staying in our aquariums! But this is nooooooooooot easy at all….they are very very temperamental and can be very moody, just liking very specific conditions that are really difficult to find! They like strong currents, bubbling water, just specific types of microalgae (yes, microalgae! It is algae, but just way way smaller!) or little shrimps, warm water (but not too warm!)…and unfortunately they cannot say what they want, so we need to discover by ourselves! It is madness to understand what they want, but when they are happy, they are really happy and they will be eat, grow, move around (yes, they move! Very slowly, but they can change position!), mate (oh, yes…they will look for friends and …) and then they will release hundreds of babies to the water! The babies are really tiny and will swim around until they find someplace they like, and then they get stuck to it (yes, like glue! But way way stronger! It is really hard to remove them!) and moult (yes, they will change their shape into looking like the adults! A bit odd, but really cool!)…and then they will grow to adults and all starts again!