MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Greetings, all! A recent sample of bright green moss occurring on a rock in Galveston Bay yielded nothing of interest as far as diatoms are concerned, but I washed a surprising amount of sand out of it, and in the sand found a world of forams.

Foraminifera are saltwater critters. They're single cell amoeba-like organisms, not snails at all, and are really weird otherwise! Other than that I don't know a lot about 'em but really ought to spend more time studying them. Here's a pretty cool web page that gives a fair idea of these things:

http://www.burkemuseum.org/blog/what-ar ... ey-studied

Images are through the AO 120, 10x plan achro, JANSJÖ lights from above. The scale is a stage micrometer, the largest of these forams is right at 0.5 mm. Both are stacks.

Very nice, Kurt!

I have not seen the top two forms from Galveston (have seen the rest).

Don't forget those Okinawa forams that I sent you. Those are very cool looking as well.

Fan, for some reason the "Maui Sand" sample lodged in my brain after reading your post, so I prepared a couple images of it. Now that I'm prepared to post up, I see you said 'Okinawa', not Maui. You mean the "star sand"? I can do that.

In the meantime, since I have it sitting right here, please allow me to present some foraminferae from Maui. Note the single foram in the center of the first image. The scale in the second reads to 5 MM. Both are single images taken with a Touptek MU300 through a Leica GZ6E stereo scope with trinocular camera port.

This sand sample is unique to me because the individual grains appear highly polished. Seems to me this is how all beach sand should look, but experience tells me otherwise; all other sand I have from surf zones tend to appear much more fragmented, rough, broken. This sand actually looks wet in the images, but is perfectly dry. The forams I believe are fossil.

Yes, Kurt, I meant the "star sand" (from Okinawa, Japan) that I sent you, which is pure foram, each and every grain. You don't have to photograph those; I was just saying that they may be even cooler.

But the Hawaii sand samples have quite some forams, coral pieces and macro shells as well, which I like. Nice work on the Maui sample!

Great work and photos on such an interesting subject...

BillT

Hi Guys i have just seen the words Star Sand and i have a slide made up of these forams i just cant find it but will look it up. On the other hand i will make a new slide from the small sample i have left. Back soon.

exmarine wrote:Hi Guys i have just seen the words Star Sand and i have a slide made up of these forams i just cant find it but will look it up. On the other hand i will make a new slide from the small sample i have left. Back soon.

Would very much like to see what you have..

BillT

Hey Ex, good to see you! Wonder if you could give a hint or two on how you prepare your star sand slides?

In other news, I wonder what it feels like to walk barefoot on an Okinawan star sand beach???

So let's have a look at that star sand. Confession: this isn't photomicography, but more like extreme macro; I shot the following through the Zeiss Tessovar. A US One Cent piece - a perfectly ordinary penny - serves as the scale indicator, why not?

Very cool, Kurt.

I like how the coin does not produce distracting reflection under your light.

Edit: sorry, I found my answer from your photo names now - they are stacks, not single frames.

You connected camera sensor, without camera lens to the Tessovar and used it as a macro lens, correct?

I glanced through Enrico's article about it. It is a nice toy