Day 12 R/V Point Sur

Today was another calm day on the water. Some say it is the calm before the storm. A storm is supposedly going to be here around Monday.



The 2000 m trawl came up around 7:30 this morning. It caught many fish again as well as a skate, more crabs, a slick head fish, baby snail fish and even an octopus.













The respirometer and camera were both deployed today. Last night, Dr. Drazen and John brainstormed on what they could do differently to get fish into the respirometer chambers. This is our step 8 of the scientific method. If you could do your experiment again, what would you do differently?

They decided to change the location of two of the hook holders and to add bait around two of the respirometer’s legs. The first photo has the original location of the hook holder, and the second photo is where it was moved. The added fish bait was wrapped in screen and tied to the legs.







Normally milk fish was used for the camera bait. This camera deployment will have rat tail fish as the bait. On a different expedition, Dr. Drazen had set out a trap with rait tail as the bait and noticed that there weren’t any rat tail fish that came near the trap. He thinks rat tails won’t come around if they sense one of their one is dead. Dr. Drazen is trying it again to see if this might be true.



The second 2000 m trawl today brought up more interesting creatures from the deep. I was fascinated to see such an enormous skate case. Look at the size difference between the regular skate eggs cases that I have seen compared to the large skate egg case. Wow!!





More skates, octopus, and king crabs were caught in this second trawl of the day. A little lantern fish was also caught. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you will be able to see its photophores. Do you remember what photophores are? Dr. Drazen discussed it during his presentation. Photophores are little organs that light up.















John continues to conduct his lab respirometer experiments on the hag fish. The hag fish had to be taken out of the lab respirometer and it produced a lot of slime. Watch the video to hear why the slime was produced.



The longline was deployed during the day. It was recovered later in the night with an even larger giant cusk eel attached to a hook.











The third trawl of the day began around 9:30 tonight and will be back on board around 1 am.

:)



“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).”