Day 15 R/V Point Sur

There were two otter trawls today. The first one was to 750 m and the other one was to 500 m. Some snail fish were caught, another hatchet fish, and shrimp.









Hagfish were caught in the first trawl. Those will be shipped to Hawaii. Hopefully they will survive the trip.



Jason was sad. He was hoping to get a certain type of rat tail in the trawl, but he didn’t get any.



He was able to do some cross-sectioning though. Jason has to cross section the fish to see how much red muscle and gel a fish has.



While we were waiting for the trawl, a sea lion was swimming.



This was the last respirometer recovery, and it had a fish inside one chamber.





A pod of dolphins were cruising along side the ship. I tried really hard to get video of them jumping out of the water. Hopefully you’ll be able to see some of them in the video.



The weather changed quickly. Luckily we headed back in today.



:)



“This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0727135. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).”

Day 14 R/V Point Sur

The typhoon storm is supposed to hit us late tomorrow night. So, we’ll be heading back into port tomorrow evening. Hopefully it won’t get too bad out here.

This morning the 5:30 am trawl came up with a huge abyssicola skate. Look how big she is!! Yes, it is a female. The third picture is the shell gland. This is where the skate makes the egg case for the baby.







The camera was recovered from 1000 m. There were a lot of hagfish in the photos. I wanted to show you a picture of a hag fish actually inside the fish, but the third photo was the best I could find. Hagfish can’t get past the thick skin of animals because they have no jaw. They do have dental plates, but they are inside their body. Often times, hagfish work their way into dead animals through eye sockets, gill slits, and mouths. (Don't forget that you can enlarge the photos by clicking on it.)







Here are some more photos of a hagfish. You will see their eyespots, their nostril and mouth, and in the last photo, their eggs.







The second trawl today was to 500 m. A different skate was caught today. A file-tail catshark was also caught. You will see it in the video below.









Tomorrow morning, there will be another trawl. We will recover the camera and respirometer, and then it will probably be time to head back into port before the storm hits. I'm looking forward to going back to school. I miss you guys.




:)



“This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0727135. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).”

Day 13 R/V Point Sur

Today was bird day for some reason. I felt like we were in the Snow White fairy tale with all the birds flying everywhere.









The 1:30 am trawl came up around 7:30. Again, it had a couple of skates and many fish. Look at the spines on the skate.









The respirometer was recovered today. Unfortunately, there weren’t any fish in the chambers. It was deployed about an hour later and will be recovered tomorrow. There are only a few days left of this research cruise. Hopefully there will be fish in the chambers for the next deployments.

The camera was recovered today. Do you remember what type of bait was used this time? Rat tail fish was baited to the anchor to test whether or not rat tail fish would come around. Dr. Drazen believes that rat tail fish will not come in an area that a dead rat tail is occupying. The 3000 m camera pictures did not show any rat tail fish. It mostly had crabs, a skate, and other fish such as Pachycara.







The camera was deployed later to 1000 m with the normal bait, milk fish. Tomorrow it will be recovered. I’m looking forward to watch will be pictured at 1000 m.

The night otter trawl started at 5:00 and was back up around 11:00. It was another muddy mess.











It was the day of interesting non-marine life creatures on board the ship. One little bird had a butterfly in its mouth, and we even had a dragonfly catching a ride.





:)



“This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0727135. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Day 12 R/V Point Sur

Today was another calm day on the water. Some say it is the calm before the storm. A storm is supposedly going to be here around Monday.



The 2000 m trawl came up around 7:30 this morning. It caught many fish again as well as a skate, more crabs, a slick head fish, baby snail fish and even an octopus.













The respirometer and camera were both deployed today. Last night, Dr. Drazen and John brainstormed on what they could do differently to get fish into the respirometer chambers. This is our step 8 of the scientific method. If you could do your experiment again, what would you do differently?

They decided to change the location of two of the hook holders and to add bait around two of the respirometer’s legs. The first photo has the original location of the hook holder, and the second photo is where it was moved. The added fish bait was wrapped in screen and tied to the legs.







Normally milk fish was used for the camera bait. This camera deployment will have rat tail fish as the bait. On a different expedition, Dr. Drazen had set out a trap with rait tail as the bait and noticed that there weren’t any rat tail fish that came near the trap. He thinks rat tails won’t come around if they sense one of their one is dead. Dr. Drazen is trying it again to see if this might be true.



The second 2000 m trawl today brought up more interesting creatures from the deep. I was fascinated to see such an enormous skate case. Look at the size difference between the regular skate eggs cases that I have seen compared to the large skate egg case. Wow!!





More skates, octopus, and king crabs were caught in this second trawl of the day. A little lantern fish was also caught. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you will be able to see its photophores. Do you remember what photophores are? Dr. Drazen discussed it during his presentation. Photophores are little organs that light up.















John continues to conduct his lab respirometer experiments on the hag fish. The hag fish had to be taken out of the lab respirometer and it produced a lot of slime. Watch the video to hear why the slime was produced.



The longline was deployed during the day. It was recovered later in the night with an even larger giant cusk eel attached to a hook.











The third trawl of the day began around 9:30 tonight and will be back on board around 1 am.

:)



“This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0727135. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).”

Day 11 R/V Point Sur

The otter trawl net was awesome!! Richie really did an amazing job with fixing it. Thanks so much Richie!! It was brought up this morning around 7:30.



Do you remember what this crab is called? It’s a squat lobster. This one is smaller than the other crab from yesterday. In the second photo, the fish was dissected. It still had something in its stomach. Can you see what it is? It’s a squat lobster!!





We always make sure to measure all the fish that has been caught. If a fish needs to be preserved, then formalin is mixed together. Formalin is a solution used to preserve the fish, keep it in tact.







Formalin needed to be made today for one particular fish. It is a type of Pachycara, but it wasn’t able to be located in any books. Dr. Drazen and John believe that this might be a new species. Dr. Drazen is e-mailing another scientist who specializes in Pachycara.



During the trawls, someone needs to keep the data. The data collector records the current depth, how much wire is out of the winch, the latitude, the longitude, and the speed of the ship every 20-30 minutes. Jack is the data collector for one of today’s trawls. He did such a wonderful job. :)





Today, the crew had a fire drill. This is like when we have fire drills in school. It allows them to practice the correct fire drill procedures.





The past few days have been a little bumpy out here at sea, but today, wow it was crazy calm. I couldn’t believe how smooth it was. The ocean looked like silk.



The second trawl of the day was also very successful and very muddy. We caught a lot of fish as well as a sea urchin and unfortunately marine debris.











The fish tub needed to be cleaned because it was way too muddy. Katie got just a little muddy.





We don’t know what this is. Pictures were taken and will be sent to other scientists to see if they know what it could be. It was really slimy!!







There will be another early morning, 1:30 am, trawl and then the respirometer, camera, and longline will all be deployed tomorrow.

:)



“This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0727135. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).”

Day 10 R/V Point Sur

It was an early morning that started at 5:00 with the beam trawl. You always get to see the photos of the sunrise, so I thought this time I would take video for you to watch it instead.



Everyone was happy that this trawl brought up many fish.





This is called a squat lobster, but it’s not even a lobster. It’s a type of crab. I thought it was extremely interesting since its body is white, but it has orange eyes. If you look at the second picture, you can see the orange in between its legs. I’ve never seen anything like this before.





Today was a really good day for Dr. Drazen. It started off with a fantastic trawl, and then he was lucky enough to find a white shark tooth amongst the trawl catch. (Yes, I was and still am very jealous. He is keeping the tooth close to him at all times. If we find another tooth, I already called it mine!!) :)



Here is another type of sea cucumber. Doesn’t it look like a mini-football?



The camera was retrieved this afternoon, and it has many awesome photos on it. Look at all these fish.





This one is very interesting. It has a sea anemone just hanging out.



Success!! The respirometer was recovered today with a fish inside. This fish is called a Pachycara.



The plan was to deploy the respirometer again. While getting it ready, Dr. Drazen took a closer look at the method of trying to catch the fish. The pictures from the camera showed huge rat tail and other fish. The fish seemed to enjoy the fish bait, so it was decided that maybe fish bait should also be put on the front of the respirometer chamber doors.







The longline was deployed around 12:30 this afternoon. Recovery was a little difficult since it was so dark. It was brought back on board around 9:00 pm. There were three rat tails, a flat nose coddling, and giant cusk eel. Look at the size of this Giant Cusk Eel!!! This was an immature female, meaning that it has not yet reached full length. Look at the size of its heart!!









At midnight, the otter trawl will be deployed. Richie spent majority of today fixing the rest of the net. I can’t wait to see what we catch!!!

:)



“This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0727135. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).”

Day 9 R/V Point Sur

Getting up early really does have its benefits when you get to see a beautiful sunrise.



This morning the camera was deployed to 3000 m. It will be recovered tomorrow morning. Next, the respirometer was recovered. Unfortunately there weren’t any fish in the chambers. It was deployed about an hour later to 3000 m again.

Here’s a video of John grappling the respirometer. I was even allowed to control the A-Frame. :)



As I said in yesterday’s blog, the otter trawl net was almost completely destroyed in last night’s trawl. Today, Richie started sewing the net back together.



Hopefully we will be able to use the otter trawl tomorrow or on Thursday. For right now, the beam trawl will be used. Instead of having doors like the otter trawl, the beam trawl has a beam.



This trawl took 6 hours to go down 3000 m and back up. We caught many, many interesting sea creatures.

Here are some pictures of beautiful sea stars, flat and round sea cucumbers, a sea urchin with Dr. Drazen pointing to its mouth, a tube-like worm, and some snail like creatures.















As always, everyone worked hard getting all the fish dissected and the tissue samples taken.



John was nice enough to put a sea spider in a jar for me to take back to school for all of you. Thanks John!! :)





Tomorrow morning the beam trawl begins at 5:00. I better get to bed so I can wake up nice and early.

:)



“This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0727135. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).”