Day 4 R/V Point Sur Part 1

We had amazing weather today! Wow! It was gorgeous throughout the entire day!! After breakfast, we recovered the camera. This camera was deployed to 200 m. We are hoping it took many photos.

After recovering the camera, it was time for the first respirometer deployment of this cruise. Dr. Drazen went over how the respirometer works to Carrie and Jack. Jason, Dr. Yancey, and Katie checked the floats to make sure they were working properly. Then they needed to check the acoustic signal release for the respirometer.







Do you remember Dr. Drazen’s PowerPoint presentation on how the respirometer is deployed and recovered? First the ship deploys the respirometer. It sinks to the bottom of the seafloor due to the five 50 lbs. weights anchored to the bottom. After about 24 hours, the ship returns to the same location the respirometer was deployed and sends out an acoustic signal to release the weights. Once the weights are released, then the respirometer will begin to resurface.



Finally the bait can be put on the hooks, and the brain can be tested for the respirometer. The brain will receive all the data from the metabolic rate of each fish captured in the chambers.





This video shows the deployment of the respirometer.



Rich & Jack are working really hard, and so is Andrew. :)





Today was a very successful day for the camera and both 1000 m otter trawls. The camera took many pictures. The following pictures are actual shots from the camera while it was at 200 m. These pictures are copyrighted which means that they belong to Dr. Drazen. Please remember if you ever use any pictures from the web or any other resources, you always give credit to the source. In these photos you will see the milk fish being used as bait. There will be many amphiods(the tiny red things all over the bait), some crabs, a hag fish, and some really cool comb jellies. Don't forget that you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.











The first otter trawl to 1000 m was extremely successful as you will see by watching the video. In the video you will see the green net floating at the surface because all the fish’s swim bladders have expanded pushing their stomachs out of their mouth. This causes them to float.



You will see pictures of the idiot fish, (3rd photo), a snail fish (4th photo), rat tail (5th photo), a skate, and sea pigs (7th photo). Nicole and Dr. Drazen use the books to help them identify the type of skate.






















“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).”