Clinton Duffy
One of the things Clinton Duffy from the Department of Conservation has on his ‘to do’ list for the trip is to collect tiny skin samples, or biopsies, from Kermadec bottlenose dolphins. To do that he needs to know how to use the biopsy rifle.
Last week Clinton was involved in field work for a research project to see whether Marine Protected Areas have a good effect on reef fish diversity, which involved diving in the Goat Island Marine Reserve north of Auckland.
To make the best use of his time he took his colleague Martin Stanley out to sea for a day so he could receive his rifle training between dives. Clinton tells me “there should be no problem collecting a suitable number of biopsies from the Kermadec bottlenose dolphins as long as they behave just like a plastic float!”
Hopefully that and yesterday’s post gives you some idea of what the ‘marine team’ have been doing. I’m told that all the gear is in Tauranga now (not just Auckland Museum’s) and the crew are working out where to put it all on the boat.
If you saw Tom’s post earlier this week you can imagine that won’t be an easy task.
