Day 7 R/V Point Sur

This morning was cold and rainy. It was a lot more difficult to recover the respirometer than yesterday’s video. The wind was up, and the swells were rocking the ship. The acoustic signal was sent first, then the respirometer floated to the service, and finally it was grappled and brought back on deck. It even had a Sablefish hanging off one of the hooks.





After getting the respirometer safely on deck, it was determined that something was wrong with the chamber doors. For some reason the doors were not closing properly when it reached the seafloor. The line in the chamber needed more force to trip the spring loaded door to close. Hopefully the next respirometer deployment later today will catch some fish in the chamber. It will be recovered tomorrow morning.



The first trawl of the day had some problems. First the weather was still bad, and the wooden doors did not seem to stay open. Eventually it seemed as though the doors finally separated, and the trawl was sent down to 500 meters. This trawl did not have as many fish as the other trawls. After putting the fish on ice, they were identified, dissected, and had tissue samples taken.





The video below is of a hagfish. You may have seen these fish on the Blue Planet DVD eating the dead carcass of a whale. These fish look and move like a snake. If you watch closely, you will see that they do not have eyes. They have what are called “eye spots”. These eye spots are photoreceptors. The photoreceptors allow the hagfish to detect light. As you notice in the video, they are slimy. You may hear me scream a little when it touched me. =)



Luckily the weather changed, and it got a little nicer out. We were able to do another trawl, and this one was much more successful.







Our last task today was to deploy the camera 500 meters.



Today was a long day and everyone seemed a little tired.







=)



“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).”