Instantaneous Growth Rate (IGR) experiments on krill during the BROKE-West voyage of the Aurora Australis, 2006

Krill were caught with an RMT-8 net and individual freshly caught animals were randomly selected from the catch and immediately transferred to individual jars. They were then maintained onboard and checked regularly for moults for up to 5 days following capture. The experiments were run a flowthrough seawater system which used 250 ml jars with small holes to allow water exchange in a large flow-through tank of seawater maintained at ambient ocean temperature.

No additional food was provided. The system allowed experiments with over 4000 krill. Each krill was checked daily after capture to ascertain whether it had moulted.

If an animal had moulted, then the animal and its moult were collected and frozen in liquid nitrogen or at -85 degrees C to be measured back ashore. The growth rate will be estimated from the difference in length of the uropod of the moult and that of the whole post-moult krill. This work was completed as part of ASAC projects 2655 and 2679 (ASAC_2655, ASAC_2679).