Day 10 R/V Point Sur

It was an early morning that started at 5:00 with the beam trawl. You always get to see the photos of the sunrise, so I thought this time I would take video for you to watch it instead.



Everyone was happy that this trawl brought up many fish.





This is called a squat lobster, but it’s not even a lobster. It’s a type of crab. I thought it was extremely interesting since its body is white, but it has orange eyes. If you look at the second picture, you can see the orange in between its legs. I’ve never seen anything like this before.





Today was a really good day for Dr. Drazen. It started off with a fantastic trawl, and then he was lucky enough to find a white shark tooth amongst the trawl catch. (Yes, I was and still am very jealous. He is keeping the tooth close to him at all times. If we find another tooth, I already called it mine!!) :)



Here is another type of sea cucumber. Doesn’t it look like a mini-football?



The camera was retrieved this afternoon, and it has many awesome photos on it. Look at all these fish.





This one is very interesting. It has a sea anemone just hanging out.



Success!! The respirometer was recovered today with a fish inside. This fish is called a Pachycara.



The plan was to deploy the respirometer again. While getting it ready, Dr. Drazen took a closer look at the method of trying to catch the fish. The pictures from the camera showed huge rat tail and other fish. The fish seemed to enjoy the fish bait, so it was decided that maybe fish bait should also be put on the front of the respirometer chamber doors.







The longline was deployed around 12:30 this afternoon. Recovery was a little difficult since it was so dark. It was brought back on board around 9:00 pm. There were three rat tails, a flat nose coddling, and giant cusk eel. Look at the size of this Giant Cusk Eel!!! This was an immature female, meaning that it has not yet reached full length. Look at the size of its heart!!









At midnight, the otter trawl will be deployed. Richie spent majority of today fixing the rest of the net. I can’t wait to see what we catch!!!

:)



“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).”