Day 3 R/V Point Sur Part 1

Today started nice and early again. I think I see a pattern occurring. We arrived at the marina at 7 am. The cars were first unloaded, and we put all of our personal items in our rooms. Then our attention turned to the respirometer. We needed to finish preparing it for the morning’s deployment.



The heavy-duty springs needed to be attached to allow the trap to close and capture the fish. During the previous cruise on the Kilo Moana, I blogged about how the respirometer works. The respirometer measures the metabolic rate of the captured fish. The respirometer is deployed for about 24 hours. After about 24 hours, the ship returns to the same location where it was originally deployed. The latitude and longitude of the location is logged on a data sheet when the respirometer is deployed to allow the ship to return to the exact spot.



Once the ship is in the correct location, a signal is sent to the device that lets go of the weights. There are five 45 lbs. weights on the bottom of the respirometer to allow it to sink and stay at the bottom. The target depth for this deployment is 100 meters. It will only take a few minutes for the respirometer to surface after the weights are released. This is the second deployment of the four-chambered respirometer. After the respirometer is recovered and brought back on board, then the data from the electronic brain will be retrieved.





While preparing the respirometer for deployment, we tested the acoustic release signal to make sure it worked and the weights will be released.








If the weights do not release, then the respirometer will not be recovered. The respirometer was successfully deployed about 2 hours after we left the dock, around 11:00am.





Our safety debriefing was given to us by Paul, the Chief Mate. He discussed where to find our life jacket, immersion suit (Remember from the Kilo Moana blog, the Monster Inc. like suits? The immersion suit is used in case we have to go overboard. The suit will help prevent hypothermia.). Paul also showed us where the life rafts were located.





Today’s weather was supposed to be nice, but we had up to 45 knot-winds and swells ranging from 10-12 ft. It definitely got rough, but I’m happy to say that I never got sea sick. The weather made it a little difficult to deploy and retrieve the otter trawls. Remember that this trawl has the wide open mouth for more specimens to be brought back to the surface. The otter trawl has a net with two wooden doors attached at the top of both sides.





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“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).”