Day 4 R/V Point Sur

Today was another early morning. It started with a beautiful sunrise. The first thing on the agenda was to recover the respirometer. The ship returned to the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of where it was dropped on Thursday. Dr. Drazen and John sent the acoustic signal to release the weights. The respirometer only went down 100m (600 ft.), so it surfaced in only a few minutes.



Unfortunately there weren't any fish inside the chambers. The first two respirometer deployments will only be sent down 100m. There will be another respirometer deployment later today to 100m. We hope there will be fish with the second deployment.







The camera will also be deployed today. It is attached to a frame with floats, a strobe light, and bait on an anchor with a scale bar. The floats are used to make the frame float to the surface. The camera needs a strobe light to take the picture. It's just like using the flash on your camera when you take a picture in a dark area. The same concept applies to why the strobe light is needed for the camera to take a picture.





Obviously the bait is needed to attract fish and other deep-sea creatures toward the camera. The anchor is used to weigh down the frame. The frame floats above the anchor that has gone down to the seafloor. This first camera deployment is 100 meters. The scale bar, that is also attached to the anchor, is needed to take measurements of the fish and other sea creatures that get their picture taken. The scale bar is like a ruler you use at school, but this scale bar is sectioned off by 2 1/2 inches while your ruler is sectioned off by 1 inch. The camera is usually deployed for 24 hours, but this deployment will only be about 12 hours.



There is a deployment everyday for the respirometer and camera. Once the respirometer was recovered, and the data collected, it was time for its second deployment. Again, it will only go down to 100 meters. There are about 2 trawls everyday. Today the trawl went out for its 3rd time and last time at 100 meters. Tomorrow the trawl will be deployed to 200 meters.

The trawl stays at its specified depth for about 15-20 minutes, and then it's pulled back up. After the trawl is back on deck, the fish are separated, measured, and sampled.

















Today wasn't a long day because we had to return to Moss Landing Port. A cable that is needed for the camera did not make it over to California with the other supplies. The cable was shipped to Moss Landing from Hawaii, and we had to return to pick it up. Once we got back to the dock, we had to visit the sea lions.





We will head back out to sea tomorrow morning at 5:00.

=)



“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).”