#bigelowlab #maine #eastboothbay #plankton #zooplankton #phytoplankton #ocean #oceanscience #blueplanet

From tiny jellyfish and zippy zooplankton to drifting phytoplankton: it was quite a cornucopia of tiny organisms. In the end, everyone gathered around the table — or, in this case, a laboratory bench — to appreciate the little things in life. We wish you a peaceful Thanksgiving!

First, the group met with SRS Nicole Poulton, and they performed several plankton tows off the dock. Back in the lab, three of our undergraduate Sea Change Semester students helped the middle schoolers view their dock tow samples under microscopes, which offered a feast for the eyes.

As part of the BLOOM Educators program, Director of Education Aislyn Keyes works with participants to help implement ocean science activities into their own curricula. Aislyn recently hosted a 2025 BLOOM Educators alum and her middle school students from Roots Academy at Bigelow Laboratory.

At the low-tide mudflats surrounding Edgecomb Eddy, they joined SRS Melody Lindsay and Postdoctoral Scientist Sarah Douglas to collect core samples. The students quickly learned that collection was the easy part of the process; wading across the thick, briny, fragrant mud proved quite challenging!

Check out this eerie microscope footage of Oxyrrhis in action, and enjoy our very own Halloween horror story from the microscopic world. Happy Halloween! 🎃
#bigelowlab #maine #eastboothbay #halloween #SpookyScience #MarineMicrobes #OceanLife #AlgaeResearch #OxyrrhisMarina #DunaliellaTertiolecta

Instead, it’s hunting down Dunaliella tertiolecta, another algae in the collection. To keep Oxyrrhis happy and prevent it from turning on its own kind, curators “feed” it fresh Dunaliella every few weeks.

Oxyrrhis marina is a heterotrophic marine algae that doesn’t make its own food like most other autotrophic algae. Instead, it hunts it. Think: Michael Myers in pursuit of a king-sized candy bar.

But this algae’s meal of choice isn’t a sugary confection.