Friday, Oct. 2, 2009
On the ship with Kristina Sawyer (Hillcrest Elementary)
Myndee holding a bag of cups before they go down with the sub
Today we had some rough weather in the morning and there was a quick but intense storm around 6am. I was still asleep, but I felt the ship rocking more than usual from my bunk below deck. The sub recovery at 11:30am was one of the waviest ones we’ve had yet, and the swimmer had to work hard to not fall off as he tried to hook the sub up to the giant rope (probably the largest rope I have ever seen). The sub brought up a bunch of sea stars. We have them in the lab here on the boat and are trying to spawn them so we can look at their larvae (babies). After lunch, I helped with the CTD (see Sept 27 ship log) and we took samples from the big bottles that went down in the ocean and put them into small bottles. Then I helped pipet an even smaller amount (2 mL, less than ½ tsp.) of water from these small bottles into tiny vials. I got to use a cool syringe and had to wear gloves and change the tip after each sample, which made me feel pretty official. The oceanographers on board will test this water to find out what kinds of picophytoplankton are floating in the water at different depths. (Picophytoplankton are tiny photosynthetic algae– one thousand of them can fit on the head of a pin!) We are looking to see if we find any larvae at those depths. If you remember, one of the goals of our cruise is to determine what the larvae are eating.
On a dive the other day, one group brought up a watermelon sized chunk of carbonate, which is a rock of limestone (calcium carbonate) that was actually made by the bacteria using the methane bubbles on the ocean floor. With a chisel and hammer, we opened it to find out what animals were living in it. We found mostly worms, some crawling around and some in tubes going through the rock. The best part about this was that we got to hammer and chisel apart our rock while we were out on the deck watching the most beautiful sunset we have seen yet.
Bago of cups attached to the sub
Some of you have asked what is happening to the Styrofoam cups you decorated in class. Well, on the second sub dive today we sent down round one of the cups! We put them into a blue mesh bag with some paper towels inside so they wouldn’t get stuck together, and tied the bag onto the outside of the sub. Afterwards, a few of us brought them into the galley and sorted them and pulled out the paper towels. They all look really cool; we can’t wait to bring them back to you after their journey 2000ft down to the sea floor! What do you think they look like now?
Around 9pm, we all gathered on the bow of the ship for dive debriefings (when we talk about the dives) and a lecture. This cruise is a class for us, so we do research projects and have classes on deep sea biology. Nice class! It was a beautiful night, with an almost full moon and bright stars, and even some of the ship’s crew showed up to see our pictures. I talked about my dive yesterday morning and showed some cool movies of the corals, sea stars and fish we saw, and then we learned all about those picoplankton that we were using the CTD samples to count earlier in the day. They are tiny, green things that have a little whip-like strand (flagellum). After lecture, I spent some time out on deck enjoying the gorgeous night, and then a few of us colored our own Styrofoam cups to send to the bottom tomorrow!