University of Oviedo visit as part of the PERCEBES project

Elena Ojea and PhD student Alba Aguión are part of the european project PERCEBES, which aims to explore the spatial management of the Stalked Barnacle fishery in Europe. To do so, PERCEBES aims to understand the connectivity patterns of the barnacle populations across the Atlantic coast of Europe, with modellers from the University of Aveiro (Portugal) constructing a larval dispersal model. In order to validate it, all PERCEBES regions have been taking barnacle samples for the last months (and will keep doing so until July 2019). Yesterday and today, Alba has been working at the ECIMAT with the samples taken so far with Gonzalo Macho, and two other PhD students (Katja Geiger and Marina Parrondo) from the University of Oviedo. This meeting enables us to develop a common protocol to count recruits and assess the sexual maturity of the animals to validate the model.

Besides this, the 3 PhD students have been learning how to use Photoshop for image analysis. As part of PERCEBES fieldwork photos of barnacle stands are being taken every month. The analysis of the images will help us understand the community dynamics and the percentage cover of the different taxons after exploitaion and no exploitation periods. The visit from Oviedo has certainly been very productive, so thanks Katja and Marina for your visit. We look forward to seeing you again soon!