The Art of Skinning

This week I began planning how I would get skin samples from the dogfish shark. After some research I realized it was pretty simple if I was clean and careful about the incisions I made. I added a section to my proposal under the methods section to describe how I would be skinning the shark. While I will admit the process was not glamorous, I was fascinated by the texture of the skin. The skin separated from the muscular tissue fairly easily. The hardest part was getting the thinnest possible layer of only skin. I will begin imaging all of my samples next week before the bacteria is transferred. I will then let the bacteria grow on them for up to three days and take more images after.