Michelle Hodgson says: the beginning of the summer was filled with lots of reading and planning for the preparation of deployment. Katerina and I spent most of May and June in the Chemistry lab with Sophie preparing the siloxane-based surface treatments, while Sophie was away.

After the completion of our treatments, we were ready to assemble the frames that would house all 96 treatments. 1152 drilled holes and a countless number of zip-ties later, the assemblage was complete.

We initially planned to deploy our treatments on July 5^th, but with a late mussel set, it was delayed until July 20^th. While waiting to deploy, we had the opportunity to collect plankton samples in hopes to identify mussel larvae; which happens to be much more difficult than we had hoped!

Once all treatments were placed into the water, things merged into a regular schedule. Every week we traveled to the aquaculture farm to collect photos and monitor the progress of mussel fouling. Due to the late deployment, we will continue our collections until late September. After all the data is collected, we will be analyzing the photos to see which treatments are the most effective at minimizing mussel fouling.