Sea Log: 2024-02-27

Published

February 27, 2024

When you’re not a grad student, just a mere volunteer, out at sea, you tend to have a fair amount of free time.1 Today I spent my free time reading, catching up with my mother,2 rowing on the rower machine, and I’m pretty sure just staring out at the ocean. A solid afternoon. Also did some laundry, and got a quick tour of the cold food storage rooms from Richard whilst in the underbelly of the ship.3

Wind picked up today, so we had some white caps and a bit more chop this evening for the nets. DPI4 deployment was cancelled this evening due to the increasing wind speed.5 All the nets turned wind sock style6 as we hoisted them out over the side of the boat; basically a very fun catching game to not get hit by the ring, cod end or heavy weight when we hauled each net back in.7 We had one regular ol’ Bongo that we deployed, recovered, and processed as per usual, and then we did a lot of “fun” nets tonight. By “fun” that means that the critters are (ideally) live when we pull them up, and Moira, Russ, and Grace then fish through the nets to find assorted zooplankton to run experiments with or study under the microscope. Sometimes we’re lucky and pull up some real neat stuff in the nets too, so that makes it fun for all of us to see what we’ll get. The last net we sent down very deep (1000m of wire paid out), so that one took a loooong time to go down and come back up.8

While we waited for the nets, we went star-gazing up in the bow9, ambled around, and I caught up on some emails. By the time our last ring net came back up, we were all very eager to see what we got. We got a few jellies, but most exciting was probably the oarfish. I thought it was just a lovely lil guy that’s very shiny and silvery, but apparently these things can get MASSIVE.10

three people demostrating how to shut a door. CTD instrument in foreground

Some11 of the ship doors are really hard to close

small silvery oarfish sitting in a vial on a workbench table top

The lil oarfish we caught, getting ready for preservation

rainbow sunset, with golden sun glow, over the pacific ocean

Ooh la la aka my favorite post-dinner activity

clear jar full of jellyfish, sitting on a yellow tabletop

Brings new meaning to “jelly jar”12

looking down into a white bucket full of assorted zooplankton and jellies

Was the deep haul13 worth it?

woman sitting on ground with a bucket of zooplankton, fishing out the ones she wants to study more closely

Grace separates her friends from her non-friends

PS: Wrangling a hose is possibly my least favorite task to do on deck. I know it’s a safety hazard so we’ve gotta coil it up nice and neat, but it takes forever, will be messed up14 before you can blink three times, and is just plain annoying. My favorite task on deck, you ask?15 Definitely prepping the lines for tag-lining, and then coiling them up nice and neat later and tying them off. I guess give me totally bendy things to tie up any day day I’m a happy sailor. Give me semi-rigid flexible things that have a mind of their own? Less happy sailor.16

Sea fun fact of the day: Oarfish are also known as Doomsday Fish, as harbingers of bad news. Hopefully that isn’t the case for us. Hopefully we just got lucky in catching and getting to see one of these fish live, because usually they live pretty deep in the ocean and humans don’t often get to see them.

Footnotes

  1. And are usually far less stressed than most others in the science party. Like I just get to be out here staring out at the waves and feeling the wind on my face?! Only way to make this more relaxing would be if I had my hammock with me. I’d rig that baby up ASAP.↩︎

  2. Hi, ma!↩︎

  3. Cold storage has the same vibes of that chilled side room in Costco where they keep all the veggies.↩︎

  4. Deep plankton imager, essentially a very fancy photocopier-style camera of zooplankton/plankton↩︎

  5. Hit about 25 knots while we were out there, so it was breezy to say the least. A couple of waves almost washed the deck.↩︎

  6. Like this, but the nets are way longer, sea-water soaked, and lugging a 70+ lb weight↩︎

  7. Last net had a bonus gift for me–I was on cod-end-grabbing duty and I got it, then the rest of the net decided I needed a lil sea shower and rained itself over me. What a gift lol↩︎

  8. For reference, the winch usually pays out wire at about 20m/min going down and up on these nets (sometimes a little faster or slower depending on what we’re trying to catch, and what the wire can handle based on sea/wind conditions)… so we waited about 50 minutes for this net to go down, and another 50ish for it to come back up. Science is exciting they say!! (For real though, it is neat. Just sometimes it is very slow and one must be patient)↩︎

  9. Clear sky and good stars, but moon is still a little too bright. Need to wait a week or so for it to wane.↩︎

  10. As the longest bony fish alive, giant oarfish can apparently get up to 56ft long!!↩︎

  11. cough wet lab door cough↩︎

  12. Side note, if anyone hasn’t had the apricot preserves from Trader Joe’s or the blueberry jam from Whole Foods, WHAT are you waiting for!? Both make very excellent scone filling. 12/10.↩︎

  13. that felt like it took FOREVERRRRRRRRRR↩︎

  14. because someone else will inevitably use it↩︎

  15. To end this on a more positive note?↩︎

  16. I’ll still coil up the hoses though, don’t worry res techs!↩︎