Talked to Doug. Apparently really difficult to find Tardigrades. 100+ man hours for two people. They die easily, they get eaten by other things. They aren't big, need to be searched for with a microscope. In the samples we will be working with it's apparently like a whole different world of life - "Like trying to find a species of snake in the amazon rain forest."
Their "indestructible state" has to be induced somehow, Doug doesn't know how to induce it or get them out of it. While they're like this they're essentially like seeds but when they are in there normal living state they die very easily.
Doug's putting a microscope in the middle lab for us to use. He suggested going to the MET shop to buy science supplies and plastic box for the little containers he showed me to hold them. He also has a microscope with a Playstation camera attached, we can plug it into one of the macs and record at a microscopic level.
Said we should talk to a biologist - there could be an easier way of finding them. Apparently it's possible to buy colonies of them but NZ is pretty strict on things like this.
Doug also said that he thinks they might have slides of Tardigrades at Te Papa that we could go and look at.
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