Day 5 R/V Point Sur

The camera was recovered early this morning. We’re hoping to have many pictures from 1000 m. This video will show you how the camera is recovered by grappling, throwing out a rope with a hook, and by bringing it up on deck with the A-Frame. I’m sorry that the camera recovery might be hard to see since the sun was already shinning brightly this morning.



After recovering the camera, it was time for the respirometer recovery. Our fingers were all crossed that we would have a fish in at least one of the chambers. The videos are of the respirometer being recovered just like the camera. You have to grapple the respirometer. The other video is of what was caught in the chambers.

John’s getting the rope ready to throw over to bring in the respirometer. (Check out his t-shirt. He’s all about supporting our school's robotics program.) :)







The respirometer was cleaned, and was ready for the next deployment after about 45 minutes. This time instead of 1000 m, it was released in 1200 m. Dr. Drazen is hoping to get out of the hag fish range, so other fish can be caught.



The other hagfish that were caught yesterday were still in the refrigerator. Today one was put into the lab respirometer. So far, the lab respirometer seems to be working extremely well.







The camera will be deployed again tomorrow. We are expecting a little rough weather tomorrow. Later, we will move into shallower water to stay away from the high swells. Today, there were two more otter trawls. This time they were at the depth of 750 m. Both trawls were successful.



The first trawl had a lot of crabs. The small pink fish are called snail fish. I think I posted some pictures of some snail fish the other day on the blog. I found out today that these cute little snail fish actually attach their eggs to the crabs that you will see below. The eggs are attached near the crabs’ gills. This allows water to run over the eggs. It is not known for how long the eggs are there, but after some time, the eggs hatch and the fish swim off.





Another interesting find in this first trawl was a baby cat shark. Now I couldn’t show you a picture of a cat shark without showing you a picture of the dogfish (dog shark) that was caught a couple of days ago. The first photo is of the cat shark.





Do you remember when Dr. Drazen came into our class and brought some of his deep-sea fish creatures? Well, he had shown you all a small hatchet fish. Look at this picture and see if you can tell which one is the hatchet fish. (Hint: It’s not the one at the top – that’s a viper fish, Dr. Drazen showed you one of those too, and it’s also not the one at the bottom.) :)



It was another breath-taking night with the sun setting and the almost full moon in the sky. Tonight we are staying in Monterey Bay closer to Santa Cruz due to the weather forecast for tomorrow. We are in shallower water to stay away from the higher swells. We'll take this opportunity to do some more shallow trawls and camera deployment.

While in the shallower waters tonight, we were surrounded by about 20-30 sea lions just cruising around. It was amazing!!





:)



“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).”