Sea Log: 2024-03-10

Published

March 10, 2024

Leroy returned!!!1 Truly, what a feat to collect not one, but TWO bby octopuses out at sea! This time he showed up in our Bongo net on Saturday night and we were all quite delighted to have him in our midst again. He seemed friendlier and more willing to hold onto our fingers.2 This time, we got to keep Leroy and he’ll be my bestest3 desk pet.4

a small CA two spot hatchling octopus in a plastic tupperware

Leroy the Second!

A small jar in the foreground with a table of people sitting in the background

A dirge was sung5 at Midnight Snackies. RIP Leroy II6

Saturday had a stunner of a sunset–phenomenal clouds, colors, the whole shebang. Sunday’s was kinda lackluster if I’m honest.7 Saturday night had a less slimy Bongo and medium slimy MOCNESS.8 Sunday night was slightly different net processing, but only because day shift still wasn’t done with their processing and we had to do ours in the main lab.9

Some tidbits:

  • Grace dropkicked a pyrosome that came up on the winch. She meant for it to go over the A-frame but instead it hit and exploded all over me. Comical. What’s a lil more goo10 at this point?!
  • Despite washing my hands multiple times and showering, I now go to bed every day smelling like zooplankton11
  • “The ocean is patchy as hell”12
  • The cool kids now say ‘gotta bongo’ rather than ‘gotta go’ when you’ve got to leave

sunset over the ocean with streaky clouds

Possibly tied for my favorite sunset out at sea13

a squashed pyrosome held up by a hand in front of the DPI instrument

Lately we’ve gotten a lot of pyrosome jerky14 on the instruments when we haul ’em back on board

orange glow from rocket in the background, with a salp net being lowered into the ocean

Nets with a view I suppose.15

Answering some of the people’s questions:16

Have you learned any sea ditty chants? Nope. Still got a week though so if you’re on this ship and have a good one come find me.

Sea fun fact of the day: We hit (and broke up) a salp chain in Sunday’s bongo. Salps are affectionately called the “trash bags of the sea.” And when they change sex, you can see the testes develop inside of them! It’s the grayish fuzzy stuff on top of the gut.17

Footnotes

  1. Probably a different Leroy, but all hatchling octopuses are named Leroy. You can’t argue with the facts.↩︎

  2. Octopuses can have different personalities, if I learned nothing else from my reading of The Soul of an Octopus↩︎

  3. and, so far, only↩︎

  4. Swing by in Cambridge if you wanna say hi to him↩︎

  5. in our hearts↩︎

  6. and probably Leroy I because his return to the ocean was more of a yeeting.↩︎

  7. But I shant miss a sunset!! I’ve now become that girl where everyone knows I simply must see the sunset. And you always know where to find me in the evenings.↩︎

  8. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of trying to catch slimy goo out of both ends of a cup because you overfilled it and it won’t all fit in one petri dish. Oops. The ocean has some very very slippery things in it if anyone was wondering.↩︎

  9. aka not in the wet lab where it’s fine to spray water all over the place. I had to very carefully aim the seawater squirt bottles last night while size-fractioning. If you know me, you know that not spilling water is not my forte so I did my best and toweled off the rest of the counter afterwards.↩︎

  10. pyro goo, YUM↩︎

  11. think: slightly rank, salty ocean with a whiff of dead fish↩︎

  12. net 9 of our MOCNESS was packed with goo, net 0 was so light on biomass↩︎

  13. Pictures can hardly capture how COOL the clouds looked, with all the pastel colors and different kinds of clouds layered on top of each other↩︎

  14. aka very flattened pyros that have had their goo forced out of them as they were dragged through the ocean with non-negligible force↩︎

  15. Once you see one rocket launch, you’ve seen ’em all. Old news at this point. LAMÉ!!↩︎

  16. Don’t forget, you too can ask away!↩︎

  17. Clear goo critters might be hard to see, but on the upside it’s real easy to see inside of them!↩︎