What is the best way to do trace metal sampling?

1. All samplers contaminate or distort in some way.
• Plastics may leach metals from ultraviolet inhibitors, metal-organic plasticizers, (rarely) metal catalysts.
• Teflon has a rough porous surface into which ions, fine charged particles, and very fine particles may become attached. Errors may occur in your first sample due to these trapped trace elements.
• Metal and glass may dissolve into the sample, usually at the nanogram/ liter level.
• The sample may react with the sampler, causing errors and damage to the sampler.
2. Are you using the right sampler? Is the sampler clean? Have you run a test blank?
3. Selecting a particular sampler may depend upon the material(s) sought or environment being sampled.
4. Alconox lab detergent is suggested to remove oil and most soils. Rinse. A 3% acid solution (HCl or HN03) will remove detergent. Rinse at least once, using distilled water. Air dry if storing.
5. Run a test blank by filling the sampler with distilled water, holding for at least as long as the sample will be held in the sampler, and running test analysis.
6. Air dry and store in a clean plastic bag until needed.

What is contained in a sampler kit?

A note about our sampler kits:
“Kits” usually include line or cable, messenger and case and are intended for immediate use in the field. Our goal is to provide everything you need, so you don’t waste precious effort and money scrounging.
Frankly, we do not recommend purchasing a sampler without a case for obvious reasons: it may be damaged in shipping or in the field.
However, Wildco® products are usually available several ways. You can buy the sampler by itself or with case only. Please call for pricing.

What is a Surber on a stick?

It may sound like something delicious on a hot summer day, but it is actually the new standard sampler recommended by the EPA and USGS. This phrase refers to our modified kick net with 60” handles in 500 mm Nitex® mesh (425-M53 or 425-N53). Also termed a “Slack sampler,” it has sold widely to customers throughout the U.S.A. USGS customers generally also order a 47-E60 500 mL Dolphin™ bucket in 504 mm SS mesh and 47-E99 guard rails.

What is a messenger?

The work horse of water sampling is the simple messenger, the bullet-shaped weight which strikes the trip mechanism and snaps the sampler shut. Send the messenger down the line when you are ready to take your sample – you choose where and when. When you lower your bottle or dredge into the water,it remains open until you close it.
Messengers afford nearly foolproof operation – highly reliable and problem-free. As with other essential equipment, your sampler is only as good as the messenger on hand. To prevent lost opportunities, carry several spares.
Most Wildco samplers work best with an 11 ounce messenger. Some water samplers need special messengers. Lighter ones are good for longer air drops. The weight of a messenger defines the distance it must fall before striking the water. A too-heavy messenger with a too-long air drop may damage your sampler. For both 8 oz and 11 oz messengers, maximum air drop is 50’ (15 m).

Teflon®-coated solid messengers are good for trace metal sampling or for very acid environments. For sampling in series, each vertical bottle uses a messenger to signal the closing of the next bottle.

A split messenger can be placed anywhere on your line, not just at the end. It literally comes on and off with one hand. The split messenger includes a spring to hold the barrel closed and a hole for attaching a lanyard.

A 45-B40 shock absorber may be needed to protect the trip mechanism on the sampler if the messenger has a long drop through the air and/or a short drop through the water.

What are the uses of analyzing fish?

Fish, which share many physiological properties with mammals, are a highly visible part of most aquatic habitats with over 775 species in North America alone. Critical to many natural food chains, they are a source of food, recreation and economic growth and affect the plankton, macrophytes and other aquatic organisms with whom they coexist. Fish often are one of the first indicators of change in the environment and can highlight in dramatic fashion pollution in streams, rivers or lakes. Changes in the types and numbers of fish often indicate a change in pH, salinity, temperature, solutes, flow, clarity, dissolved oxygen, substrate composition or pollution level.

Tagging: Marking a fish and releasing it for recapture yields information on movement, rates of growth, genetic strains, and behavior of individual fish.

What are some maintenance Tips for Wildco Core Samplers?

Cleaning Wildco® corer valves:
Keep valves and seats in corer heads free of dirt, grease and oil to maintain a good air seal. It’s best to clean valve and seat after each sample with 70% ethyl alcohol.
Chemical removal of rust stains from stainless steel:
Stainless steel parts may show a rust stain, indicating an active corrosion cell area which should be deactivated. These are often caused by scratching or marring the surface.
Soak the stained area in concentrated HNO3 for a few hours or make a paste to spread over the stain using Vaseline, corn starch or other thickener. Repeat as needed.
Sand blasting with clean silica sand will remove rust but must be rinsed with strong HNO3 to prevent future damage.
If left in salt water, stainless steel corrodes quickly. All stainless steel should be rinsed at once with fresh water after removal from salt water.

What are Kemmerer bottles?

Based on a 1927 design by Dr. George Kemmerer, University of Wisconsin, the Kemmerer bottle has long been favored by limnologists and fishery biologists. With few moving parts and a foolproof trip, it offers a trouble-free life.

Clear acrylic cylinders have the advantage of being transparent: you can see the sample before removal. You can also install thermometers inside acrylic samplers. Because acrylic scratches, cases are recommended.

Kemmerers come in durable stainless steel, unlike Alpha and Beta™ samplers, which have plastic main tubes only.

A key feature in the Kemmerer is the automatic lock which keeps stoppers open before the sampler is lowered. The seals close by dropping a messenger. When the sampler is closed, the entire weight of the sampler and contents is carried upon the lower valve. This forces the sampler to sit securely on the lower valve and prevents water leakage. A drain in the bottom stopper draws off water for analysis.

The distinctive patented trip head works reliably with air drops 1 m (39”) to 15 m (50 feet). We call it the All-Angle™ because, as the name implies, you can strike it up to 90°. It is particularly useful in fast flowing streams where the current may push the messenger. This trip works only if your sampler is on a taut line. Otherwise the messenger may not slide down fast enough to close the bottle.

The All-Angle™ trip head comes in four forms: our standard polyurethane; stainless steel; machined teflon for our top-of-the line teflon sampler; and a special size for our well samplers. A special variant of the polyurethane (PU) All-Angle™ is used with our 1500 series Kemmerers on page 32. Delrin plastic fasteners and an O-ring replace the stainless steel garter spring in the trip head on these bottles.

The All-Angle™ is not all things to all samplers, however. It is not suitable for long air drops. When sampling from an elevation such as a bridge, we suggest the 1270-l40 Tugger™ trip, which does not need a messenger. (Page 32.)

The stainless steel or teflon trips and bottles are used when solvents, high temperature or other conditions preclude the use of a polyurethane trip. In these cases, you will also need silicone or teflon seals to avoid organic compounds or withstand high temperatures. Teflon, for instance, can be used in temperatures up to 230° C (450° F).

What are Core Samplers?

A core, in marine research, is a cylindrical section taken from sediments underlying a water body.

Core samplers, the instruments used to obtain cores, range from the simple to the complex. The variety of corer types reflect the breadth and variety of marine research.

For example, the simplest corers are hand-operated types used in shallow waters to collect sediment cores containing fauna. For biological studies, a core 20-25 cm (8-10”) in length is usually sufficient.

The most complex core samplers are those used in oceanographic research. These are generally large and require winches, power sources and other gear. In extreme cases they can take cores as long as 25 m (80’). Such cores have provided geological and climatic information through study of the stratified sediments and their contained fossils.

If done properly, core sampling is a reliable method for obtaining basic data for many types of studies pertaining to the water-and-bottom interface of marine bodies. It is often the only practical way – and therefore the best way – to sample underwater strata satisfactorily.

Wildco® core sampling equipment offers dependability, versatility and quality. It ranges from light, hand-operated corers used in shallow water from boats to gravity corers relying on weight such as the K-B™ corer. Interchangeable parts serve as “building blocks” to construct the equipment you need for your particular project. For example, the heads can attach to more than one type of core tube.

The “building block” concept relies on a simple design feature: the uniform use of coarse pipe thread. This thread provides an extremely reliable way to connect core tubes to sampling heads at a low mass-market cost. Because we use straight pipe threads threaded all the way into the head assembly, no pipe wrenches are required – a bonus in the field. While by the very nature of the equipment these threads can become dirty and jam, they can be washed in water to remove debris and easily reattached.

Wildco® hand and Ogeechee™ corers are designed to be lowered on a taut line or cable into the substrate. They are not designed to be dropped because they are top heavy and can easily tip over. While some customers tell us they obtain a good sample by a free drop on a loose line up to 20-30” (7-10 m), to accomplish this you must keep the sampler entirely in water, still and vertical when dropped. This cannot be attempted using bricks or cement blocks as weights due to the need to keep the core tube balanced and vertical.

What are Characteristics of good core samplers?

Perpendicular placement: The core sampler must make a vertical or straight entry into sediments to secure a reliably representative cross-section sample.
Penetration: It must penetrate the sediments you expect to find and adaptable for many field situations.
Core retention: There should be minimal loss of any part of the sample during return to the surface.
Maximum sample validity: This means:
a. Samplers intended for layered sediments should obtain cores showing minimum disturbance of layers by compression or by displacement around the circumference.
b. Samplers intended to obtain bottom sediments and their resident fauna need a design which causes minimum displacement or escape of fauna during sampling.
Simplicity: Purchase the simplest instrument capable of producing the type of samples you require.

U.S. Standard Sieve Sizes

U.S. standard mesh or sieve numbers, widely used in geological particle sizing, are arbitrary designations and do not refer to actual mesh count. They are the open width of one side of the square aperture and are made to micron sizes, not English measurements, using heavy wire woven with square holes. The standard sieve for freshwater, estuarine and marine benthic macroinvertebrates is # 35.