Day 7 R/V Point Sur

This morning started at 6:30. First the camera needed to be recovered.



It was such a beautiful morning. Andrew thought so too, and that's why he was dancing!! :)







The ride was extremely rough heading off shore to retrieve the respirometer. It took about a couple of hours to get to the location of the respirometer. The acoustic signal was released, and the respirometer surface around 45 minutes later. Here is a video showing the respirometer surfacing in the rough waters.



We are now 2 for 2 with the respirometer. This time there was a rat tail in the 3rd chamber. After cleaning the chambers, downloading the data from the chambers, and attaching the weights, the respirometer was ready for another deployment. It was deployed to 2000 m. I can’t wait to see what we get tomorrow when the respirometer is recovered in the morning.





Our next focus was on deploying the camera to 2000 m. It is attached to a frame with floats, a strobe light, and bait on an anchor with a scale bar. The floats are used to make the frame float to the surface. The camera needs a strobe light to take the picture. It's just like using the flash on your camera when you take a picture in a dark area. The same concept applies to why the strobe light is needed for the camera to take a picture.



Obviously the bait is needed to attract fish and other deep-sea creatures toward the camera. The anchor is used to weigh down the frame. The frame floats above the anchor that has gone down to the seafloor. This first camera deployment is 100 meters. The scale bar, which is also attached to the anchor, is needed to take measurements of the fish and other sea creatures that get their picture taken. The scale bar is like a ruler you use at school, but this scale bar is sectioned off by 2 1/2 inches while your ruler is sectioned off by 1 inch.



The camera and respirometer will both be recovered tomorrow morning. Today was our deepest trawl, 2000 m. There was a problem with the winch, but this ship crew is the best!! They problem-solved together and fixed it. What great teamwork!!! :)



This trawl took over 6 hours. It took almost 3 hours for the trawl to get to the bottom of the sea floor, then trawled for an hour, and it was finally brought back to the surface. The catch was little, but we were able to get a lot of measurements and tissue samples for the research project. You will see photos of a rat tail, a cool looking squid, shrimp, and a sea spider.











Everyone worked really hard today. :)







Katie brought me a present while I was blogging . . .



I see you . . .

:)




“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).”