Day 8 R/V Point Sur

I woke up to a beautiful Wednesday morning. We will have one more 500 meter trawl, and then later in the day will be a 1,000 meter trawl. The first trawl gathered many fish that we’ve already seen in the previous trawls. There were more hagfish, sablefish, rock fish, and even a deep-sea eel like fish which is very uncommon for this area.



If you look closely in the picture above, you will note the pinkish-reddish fish (rock fish) has its eyes bulging out. These fish have air pockets near their eyes and when the fish is raised through the different pressure levels, the air pockets expand with air. The air expands the eyes, stomach, and swim bladder.

The pictures below are of a skate. You will notice that it appears to have four eyes on top. Skates only have two eyes, but they have holes behind their eyes which are called spiracles. The spiracles allow water to come through and pass over its gills.





The camera and respirometer were both recovered this morning. Yesterday, it was discovered that the doors had a problem with closing. John cut the paddle that spins in the respirometer to allow the spring loaded doors to close. He only cut the paddle for the control chamber to test if it would work. Luckily the control door did close!! =)

All of the bait was stolen from the other three chambers, and many amphipods were found inside the chambers. Do you remember amphipods? They are the little creatures that remind me of maggots. Today, John will cut the paddles in the other chambers. The respirometer will be deployed later today at 1,000 meters.



After the recovery, it was time for the deep 1,000 meter trawl. This trawl takes over an hour and half to complete. It takes about 45 minutes for the trawl to reach 1,000 meters, and then it stays on the seafloor for about 7 minutes. Finally it starts coming back to the surface and that takes another 45 minutes.

While waiting for the 1,000 meter trawl to surface, Nicole worked on her shark and skate contraption. She will deploy her contraption tomorrow morning. She is studying the metabolic rate of sharks, skates and rays, and is also studying trophic ecology, the food web.





As I stated before, when fish are brought up to the surface from the deep, they expand from the pressure. Once the net came to the surface, it floated because of the expanding fish.





This trawl was extremely deep, so the net weighed a lot with all the fish. The net had to be craned up and then down to the fish container.





We had a very successful trawl at 1,000 meters. The fish are again identified and measured. Some are released back into the ocean, while others are dissected and have tissue samples taken.





Shaara is releasing crabs that were brought up with the trawl.





Donna with her second favorite fish, a rat fish.



The Dover fish is a flat fish. This flat fish is extremely slimy and slippery. Mariah and Shaara are measuring the total length of the fish, while Nicole records the information on the data sheet.



I recorded the measurements and marked the tissue samples taken from this snail fish.



Of course, we are always having a good time! =)



Here are some pictures on tissue sampling.





Tonight ended with deploying both the camera and respirometer to 1,000 meters. Tomorrow we will retrieve them.



The moon was gorgeous tonight!!!





=)



“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).”