May 13, 2008

Day 2

We left Fort Pierce and Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at 6:00am this morning. As we crossed the Gulf Stream, the waves were up to 8 feet high and made some people seasick. My bunk is near the bow (or front) of the ship so I hear and feel the waves as they crash into the hull (or bottom) of the ship. The constant rocking lulls me to sleep.

As we cross the Gulf Stream we got a safety briefing from the captain, George Gunther. We tried on our lifejackets (Personal Floatation Devices) and Katie tried on a survival suit (see picture). Survival suits are much like thick wetsuits that would keep us warm should we be forced to abandon ship. We had a fire drill where the crew pretended to put out an imaginary fire, dressed in full firefighter attire.

On the top deck of the ship, we saw bottle-nosed dolphins and flying fish. There is a lots of brown seaweed called Sargassum that floats at the surface of the water using air-filled sacs for floatation. I will be looking out for bioluminescent animals tonight by looking over the bow (or front) of the ship as it bumps into plankton as it moves through the water

The ship’s crew then trained us how to use a CTD carousel (see picture) that measure temperature, salinity, and depth through the water and allows us to collect water samples at whatever depth we chose. We also collected some plankton using a plankton net at the surfaces of the water. We saw lots of holoplankton, or animals that spend their whole life in the plankton such as copepods and jellyfish. We saw meroplankton such as brittle star, sea urchin, and sea cucumber larvae (i.e. babies). Dr. Craig Young gave two lectures on the history of research in the deep sea and changes seen in technology that have lead to discoveries with in the deepest parts of the ocean. Last, we were given a tour of the Johnson Sea Link submersible we will be diving in tomorrow and every day for the rest of the cruise.

I’ll write again when I go down in the submersible. I am super excited.

-Maya (Ms. Wolf)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Bahamas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.