Day 2 R/V Point Sur Part 1

Everyone arrived at the Point Sur at 7:30 this morning. It was a little warmer this morning, around 60 degrees. The Hawaii crew includes Dr. Drazen the Chief Scientist, John the Technician/Research Assistant, Nicole and Jason who are both graduate students of oceanography and research assistants. The California crew is represented by Katie who is a graduate student at MLML (Moss Landing Marine Lab). The Washington crew includes Dr. Yancey, professor at Whitman College, and one of his undergraduate students, Carrie. The International crew includes Jackie Lighten from London who is a graduate student at Dalhousie University in Canada.

The plan was to set sail at 8:30 after first moving our luggage and personal things on board, having a safety meeting, and a brief meeting with the Captain. The safety meeting was held at the muster location. It’s just like how we have a meeting location if there is a fire at our school; this location is where everyone meets in case of an emergency. We all had to wear our life jackets. Paul, the 2nd Mate, went over all the safety procedures with us.



The agenda for the day was to deploy the camera to 100 m and have two otter trawls at 100 m. First we had to get the camera ready for deployment. Do you remember how many pictures the camera takes and how often? The camera takes a picture every 2 minutes. It can take a total of 1,200 pictures.











Last cruise, the otter trawl doors were extremely light in weight. When bringing the trawl back to the surface, the doors would not close. This would allow fish to come out of the net. During this trawl, the doors will have an added weight bar to weigh them down. The doors will sink faster, and will hopefully close when it resurfaces.



A test trawl was done to see if the added weight on the doors would help them to close. It was successful. The doors definitely closed.



During the test trawl, we got many Sea Nettle Jellyfish in the net. They were so huge!! Can you see the red tentacles?





In this video, Dr. Drazen is helping the jellyfish get off the deck.



Now it was time to do the real 100 m trawl. This trawl had many fish, but also many, many Sea Nettles. I don’t remember having these jellyfish last cruise. I wonder why there have been so many of them this cruise.

Dr. Yancey found an article online that discusses a suggestion to the increase of jellyfish in the Monterey Bay area. (You can copy and paste this link into a new internet window.)

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local-beat/Jellyfish-Gum-Up-Monterey-Aquariums-Waterworks-jw-53152702.html











Do you remember when Dr. Drazen came and spoke to our class? He talked to you about pressure of the deep-sea. When the deep-sea fish are brought to the surface, their swim bladders expand because of the pressure difference. This causes the fish’s stomach to come out of its mouth.





“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).”