The Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) has just released the “Plan and report of the in situ caging experiment”. This report describes the methods of the mussel caging experiment, which was carried out in the Bornholm deep from May until August 2012.

In the experiment, blue mussels (Mytilus spp.) were deployed in specifically designed cages at four sites with two cages at each site (35m and 65m depth). Four hundred mussels were placed in each cage. In addition, the cages were equipped with passive samplers to record the accumulation of selected organic contaminants and hydrography sensors with automatic loggers measuring temperature, salinity and oxygen.

 

After retrieval of the cages in August, the exposed organisms were dissected onboard, all the samples were frozen and later on delivered to several laboratories. The samples  are now to be analysed for accumulation of chemical substances and, even more importantly, their true biological effects (biomarkers). Analysing of the samples has just begun and the results will described later in the forthcoming report "Biomarker and chemical analysis results from caging study".

 

Click here to download the report.