Field Research & Training on the Coastal Payra River

Lead By: Abdullah Al Hasan, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Marine Fisheries & Oceanography
Location: Payra River, Coastal Bangladesh

We led postgraduate and undergraduate students through a full-day field program on the estuarine Payra River—combining data collection, instrument demonstrations, and hands-on training.

What we did

• Physicochemical profiling: Temperature, salinity, DO, TDS, pH, turbidity (multiparameter probes, refractometer salinometer, Secchi disk).
• Water sampling: Niskin bottle samples for nutrients, microplastics, and trace metals.
• Plankton studies: Phytoplankton & zooplankton collection for biomass and chlorophyll-a.
• Fisheries health and ecotoxicology: Fish analyses for microplastics and heavy metals.
• Sediment surveys: Van Veen grab sampling for benthic conditions and pollutant accumulation.
• Spatial mapping: GPS-based georeferencing to integrate ecological and geospatial datasets.

Student outcomes

• Instrument proficiency & standard sampling protocols
• Applied learning in a real estuarine system
• Teamwork, data stewardship, and field safety 🌍📚🎓 💡
  Data analysis is underway to inform coastal monitoring, blue-economy potential, and evidence-based management of the Payra estuary.