After four layovers in different airports and a few stomach-clenching moments of airline turbulence, we’ve made it home.  Returning from a trip like this is bittersweet.   I miss the warm weather and the warm ocean of the Bahamas, but I felt so happy when I saw the verdant green of home through the airplane window as we flew into North Bend.   I’m finding it a little hard to get into the swing of things here.  The three-hour time change is hard to adjust to—I find myself ravenously hungry at 2:30 pm, just when dinner would have been served on the boat.

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to go on this research trip.  It was amazing to explore new places and to learn so many new things.  I have come back even more excited about marine science than I was when I left.  There are so many things still to discover!  I must say that I’m so impressed with all of the great questions you students sent us while we were at sea.  You have great scientific minds!  You challenged us to look even more closely at the animals and processes of the deep sea.   I know we’re all looking forward to returning to the classroom to share more of our experiences with all of you.

Take care!

Katie Bennett

I was just thinking today that I had no idea what day of the week it is anymore.  Here at sea, far away from clocks and schedules and calendars, the days seem to run together into one.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  Every day is different and interesting.  We’re doing amazing things and seeing things that few people (if anyone) have ever seen before!  But the routine of ship life makes it very hard to not find yourself suddenly unaware of what the date is or even what day of the week it is.  If I didn’t have my watch, I’d have no idea what time of day it was, except for where the sun is in the sky.  It’s a different sort of life here, and I really like it.  I’ll miss these sunny, timeless days in baking hot paradise.

Mr. Dunn

Dive blog for May 22, 2008

The afternoon dive started out wonderfully.  I climbed into the back through the hatch underneath the submarine.  The sub technician, Frank, climbed in after me.  Soon the gigantic A-frame had lifted us up off the deck of ship and had set us down into the crystal clear water of the Bahamas.  I took off my shoes and sat back to look out the porthole and enjoy the journey to the bottom of the sea.  As we slowly sank deeper, the water through the porthole became less and less blue and more and more black.  I could hear over my head-set that we were now 500 feet below the surface of the ocean.  I began to see small flashes of light and began to get myself situated for watching the magnificent show of bioluminescence.  And that’s when I heard a loud “POP!” just above my head.

I glanced at Frank to see if he was worried at all, but it didn’t seem to have bothered him.  Then the lights went out…but only for a second.  Frank again seemed completely unfazed.  I figured that this sort of thing was normal.  After all, I’d only been on one dive before.  But then it happened again.  The lights flickered out, and the fans and monitors went off and came back on.  This time Frank picked up the phone and asked Phil, the sub driver in the front if the power was flickering on and off there too.  It was.  Frank and Phil radioed to the surface, and after a brief conversation, they decided that they would continue the dive but keep an eye on things.  We were around 650 feet deep when the lights first flickered.  By the time we were 850 feet deep, the power glitches were happening more frequently.  I was beginning to get nervous.  Phil decided to abort the dive and head back up for the surface.

A few minutes later, the power went out completely.  We were now in the dark.  Phil switched to emergency power and continued to move us slowly to the surface.  My heart was beating a little harder now.  The water didn’t seem to be getting lighter fast enough.  I was so glad that Frank was back there with me.  I asked him about different adventures he had been a part of in the sub.  He told me about the time he was in the sub when the battery that powers the sub literally exploded beneath them and they had made it to the surface on the buoyancy of the sub alone.  I appreciated these stories.  If they had made it through all these other things alright, we would make it out of our current problem alright, too.  But Frank’s stories served another purpose besides just calming my troubled mind.  They had also distracted me.  Before I knew it, the water outside the porthole window was a bright blue.  I saw a beautiful jellyfish swim past, followed by a little yellow fish.  We reached the surface around 4:45 PM and were brought back on board the Seward Johnson.  As I write this, the sub technicians are working to discover the electrical problem with the submarine so that they can fix it and be ready for tomorrow’s dives.  If there’s one thing I learned today from my adventure in the deep, it’s that despite all of our technology and progress, the study of the deep sea is still a thrilling and sometimes dangerous field.

Mr. Dunn

This morning, after we launched the morning sub, we went on a snorkeling trip to a coral reef. Some of our favorite sightings were elkhorn coral, cuttlefish, triggerfish, and a sea turtle. When we were back on the ship we saw the sub surface and get picked up by the ship. We put the animals from the sub in the cold room so they stay at the same cold temperature from where they were collected.

After lunch, we let the CTD out and it began to rain (our first rain since we’ve been here!). We could actually see the storm moving closer across the water. The storm didn’t last long, and it was sunny again within the next hour.

In the afternoon, I went down to 1853 feet in the submersible. We left at 4:00 and surfaced at 7:30. It took almost 30 minutes to get that far down! We collected sea urchins, sand dollars, and a piece of coral. I was able to see what was on the video in the front and had a window on each side in the back. My job was to record what, where, and when we collected animals. I had an amazing time!

Ms. Matthews

It’s 10:30 at night, and the lab is still bustling as people tend to their various experiments and get things organized for tomorrow. We just finished our evening lecture—given outside on the bow of the boat in the muggy, Bahamanian heat. The lecture was on the effects of pressure on deep-sea animals—it’s so cool to learn about animals and processes that we are seeing every day! Today is our sixth day at sea, and things are settling into a routine. It’s crazy that the routine involves submersible launches and snorkeling trips and seeing animals that most people don’t know exist! We do so many cool things, but do you know what we don’t do much? SLEEP! I was on the late shift last night for the CTD cast. We didn’t start the cast until just before 9pm. For the CTD cast, an apparatus with 24 bottles is lowered down to the deep ocean. I think you’ve probably heard about it in some of the other ship logs that we’ve sent to you. Do you remember that the CTD allows us to collect water from specific depths of the ocean? Well last night the CTD went deeper than any of our sub dives! It went deeper than 4,000 meters! And guess what went with it… Dozens of Styrofoam cups decorated by the amazing students of the southern Oregon coast! The cups are back on the boat. What do you think they look like now?

It takes a couple of hours to send the CTD down that far and bring it up again. Once it is back on board, it takes about two hours to process the water samples so they can be looked at later. I didn’t go to bed until after two in the morning! That might not seem too late to you, but keep in mind that breakfast is only served from 6:30-7:30 in the morning. And I like my breakfast.

Today there was a brief thunder and lightning storm. It never actually rained, but I stood on the back deck and watched dark clouds gather on the horizon. Tomorrow we snorkel in the morning and do another CTD cast in the afternoon. I was lucky enough to see a Nurse Shark the last time I went snorkeling, and Annie Pollard saw a Sting Ray. Maya Wolf and Sara Matthews are going down in the submersible. I can’t wait to hear about the animals they find!! I am so happy to be on this adventure. Every day we are out here, I am reminded that marine biologists have the coolest job in the world. Take care young scientists, you’ll hear from me again soon.

Katie Bennet.

Egg Island, Bahamas

Ms. Austin

Today was another busy day on the R/V Seward Johnson. I woke up and had breakfast around 7:30am and spent the early part of the morning working on my deep-sea research project. I am studying how the color of crustaceans change with depth. So, this morning I took pictures of the crustaceans that we had collected at each depth during our MOCNESS plankton sampling a few days ago. After about 3 hours of taking pictures for my project, I took a quick break and sat out in the sunlight on the deck of the ship. I then had lunch in the galley and afterward helped bring in the animals that were collected from the morning submarine dive. There were some slaps, other interesting tunicates and a sea star, which they had collected. Today’s submarine dives went as deep as 2,100 feet!

In the afternoon I went snorkeling in Golden Cay where I saw lionfish, barracuda, rays and some beautiful sea urchins. I made it back in time to eat dinner and watch the evening sub return to the ship at 7:30pm. That night starting around 9:00pm, we all helped launch a CTD (which measures temperature, salinity and chlorophyll at different depths) to around 3,500 feet! After the CTD came back up we collected all the water from the bottles and took them to the lab to be analyzed. This whole process took us into the wee hours of the morning. I went to bed exhausted!

May 17, 2008 Bahamas Research Cruise

Day 5

We started the day off of Goulding Cay. Two scientist, Sandra and Stephanie went down in the sub in the morning and saw many interesting sea urchins (see picture). While they were in the submersible, we sorted through plankton caught at the surface of the ocean using a plankton net. We found some exciting larvae (see picture). After the sub returned to the surface and we put the urchins collected in sea water in a cold room.

We ran out of the chemicals needed to spawn urchins (or make them give off babies), so we steamed over to Nassau, the capitol of the Bahamas to pick up more chemicals. Many people went ashore to Nassau and Paradise Island. We saw the straw market, where Bahamian women make baskets of native grasses. Additionally we went to the historic Fort Fincastle that was built in 1793 on the highest point of Nassau. As a good lookout point, Fort Fincastle was a place of protection for the town of Nassau and the harbor. Finally, some of us visited a historic Anglican Church and an aquarium with lots of cool sea animals.

I went down in the back of the sub in the afternoon. I saw mostly mud, fish, sea urchins, anemones, and sea stars. We collected different types of sea urchins. I also got a quick view of a squid that shot ink out at the sub to distract us as it swam away. It was really cool. On the way up in the sub when it became light enough to see all the bubbles of air released from the sub floated up and surrounded the sub like a curtain of sequins. The air bubbles were flat. I am hoping my students may have a hypothesis about why the air bubbles were flat and not filled out bubbles. We’ll be taking the Styrofoam cups down tomorrow as well.

More in a few days.

-Maya (Ms. Wolf)

by Mr. Miller

Today was an exciting day. It was the first day for the sub to take samples in the deep. Everyone got up around 6:30 to get ready and wish the scientists and pilots luck. As the sub went down everyone jumped and cheered. While the sub is below, those of us on the ship needed to prepare for their return. Gathering cold water, preparing and labeling buckets, and setting up aquariums where just a few of the many tasks needed to be done before the sub returned to the surface. We worked so hard we earned some down time so many of us gathered our snorkeling gear and headed to Paradise Island. The ride on the boat was amazing. The waves were high and the mini boat kept leaping in the air and crashing into the waves below. It was like riding on a fast loop-to-loop rollercoaster! The water was warm and a great retreat from the hot Bahamian sun. So many creatures live in the sand and eel grass bed around the island. Deep red sea biscuits slowly cruised the bottom looking for algae, silvery sand dollars swayed in the tide, and helmet conchs lurked in the shadows waiting for the next tasty meal of urchin tartar.

Once the snorkelers and the sub returned we looked in wonder at all the interesting creatures that live at the bottom. Many scientists where looking at urchins that live in the deep and studying what they look like as they grow. Ms. Wolf and I decided to dissect one of the urchins to see what it looked like on the inside. When I looked in the gut, a frilly worm an inch long shimmed out of the intestines. This worm lives in the urchin’s intestines but no one really knows what it eats or how it survives. We are going to run experiments on these worms in order to find out how they survive in this unique habitat. Well, I am really tired and it is going to be another fun filled day tomorrow so I should get some sleep.

Study hard, listen to your teachers, and have fun. See you in two weeks,

Mr. Miller

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)