Day 5 R/V Point Sur Part 1

Today was another early rising day at 5:30 am. This morning we needed to recover both the camera and respirometer. Remember how the respirometer is brought back to the surface? An acoustic signal is sent down over the exact place the respirometer was released. Then the weights are released, and the floats allow the respirometer to rise. This is the same procedure for the camera. An acoustic signal is sent down over the exact location the camera was released. The signal is sent down, and the anchor is released to allow the camera frame to surface.



It took about a minute for the camera frame to surface. It was now time to see if any fish or sea creatures got their picture taken. The pictures will give a pretty good idea of what kind of deep-sea creatures are at 100 meters.





Finally the sunrise!!! =)



The camera takes pictures every 2 minutes. It was only in the ocean for about 12 hours, so it took about 600 photos. Normally, the camera would be in the ocean for about 24 hours. It has the ability to take 1,200 photos during that time. When John put the camera card into the computer, I was amazed to see all the deep-sea creatures that visited the bait on the anchor. Dr. Drazen is going to allow me to post a few of the pictures the camera took. This is Dr. Drazen’s research cruise and these pictures belong to him. They will be copyrighted. Please remember if you ever use any pictures from the web or any other resources, you always give credit to the source.



Here are the pictures from the camera that was deployed 100 meters. In the first picture there are sun stars, hagfish, crabs, a sea star, a midshipment (that is the one curled up near the wood on the right side of the picture), and the bait, milkfish.



If you look closely to the right in this picture, you will see a small poacher fish. Don't forget that you can click on the picture to enlarge it.



Thank you Dr. Drazen and John Yeh for allowing me to post your amazing deep-sea fish pictures!! =)



After the camera recovery, the next task was to send the acoustic signal to start the recovery of the respirometer. Again, it did not take that long since the respirometer was only sent to 100 meters. The challenging part was getting the ship in position to recover it. Unfortunately the sun was in the wrong place for us to see the respirometer floating at the surface. Luckily we have an awesome crew. The Captain Jeff and Chief Mate Paul were able to successfully position the ship to get the respirometer safely.



The chambers were all empty, but the bait holder had many tiny, tiny creatures crawling all over it. To me, they looked like little maggots. They are called amphiods. They are little scavengers that eat dead carcass. You can see in the video how tiny they are and the bones from the bait fish in the bait holder.

*Remember to allow the video to buffer and completely download. It will make the video go smoothly.*




After everything is ready to go again, the camera and respirometer will be deployed.







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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).”