Today we are close to the edge of the continental shelf near Louisiana, and life is abounding. Our depth is a little over 85 meters, and the seas are calm. At our second station two dolphins announced their presence by slapping the water with their tails and jumping.
We got a surprise in our sediment sample as well. A small benthic crab
was buried in the mud. He is currently living in a petri dish next to my computer.
Our next station is about 5 hours away. So, a lot of the crew is catching up on sleep. Tomorrow we will be finishing our furthest stations. Then, we will begin steaming back towards port, sampling along the way. With only a few days left, be sure to ask us any questions before the cruise ends.
7 comments:
Cool photos, Alanna! Sounds like you folks have had some pretty full days. Are you finding any surprises (other than the crab) in your water and sediment data collections? - stay safe - Melanie W.
Marcia wants to say hi to Jade!
She is also curious to know if you have found any other creatures in the sediments (worms, for example). If no creatures have been found, is that fairly representative of bottom conditions (or what you expected)? and is that linked to a lack of oxygen? Are there some organisms that thrive in low oxygen environments?
Also, do you have any idea how far along the hypoxia cycle is at the moment? Have you timed the cruise to beat the hypoxia? To beat the blooms? (are there blooms?)
I am Erik's brother. I teach 3rd grade at Belcher Elem. I have tried to use your website at school but unfoutunatly the daily blog is being blocked by the county. I have shown the students the home page and tried to explain the purpose for your research to them. I also gave them the site address and told them that they can check it out from home. One student named Zac had a question you might want to answer? He asked me where do you get your food and where do you sleep?
Marcia,
We don't capture many organisms in the sediment samples, but we usually do get a few worms. The most common type are tube worms, which have a flexible outer covering that they live inside. Tonight we caught a little red wiggly worm, but did not get a picture. None of us have much expertise in identifying these benthic (bottom dwelling) organisms, so we'll have to take some time to check them out when we get back home.
Right now, the oxygen concentrations are still pretty reasonable, so we are not very far into the hypoxia cycle. However, the surface water has a much lower salinity than the deep water all along the shelf, so we anticipate that there will be a strong hypoxia event this summer. Unless something breaks up this stratification (like a very large storm) the bottom water oxygen concentrations should start decreasing as the water temperature increases.
There's not too much going on with algal blooms as far as we can tell. We had one station where the bottom water had a pretty high concentration of phytoplankton, but it seemed to be confined to a limited area.
This cruise was timed to coincide with the high flow period of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, and we managed to hit it pretty squarely. Our next cruise will be in November, 2008, during low flow, and our final cruise will be in July, 2009, to coincide with the most-likely time period for hypoxia.
Thanks for the great questions!
-Dr. Krest
Lance,
Thanks for the questions! And bummer about the blog getting blocked!
Zac,
On the boat, we all have bedrooms (which we call staterooms). The Pelican has three main levels (or "decks"). The captains and chief scientists sleep on the "upper deck", most of the living and working occurs on the "Main deck", and the rest of the crew and scientists sleep on the "Lower Deck". The lower deck tends to be a little noisier, and the upper deck moves a lot more if the ship is rolling, so it's a tradeoff.
We eat our food in the "Galley" on the main deck. There is a full-time cook who is part of the ship's crew. His name is Randy, and he is an amazing cook. We eat very well. There is a huge refrigerator and freezer on the main deck, and there is also a small "ice-cream" freezer that we can raid if we need a snack.
I'm going to post a link to diagrams of the ship's different decks in this blog, and I'll try to get them posted on the main webpage as well:
http://www.stpt.usf.edu/coas/espg/magmix/home.asp
http://www.lumcon.edu/pelican/Specifications/default.asp?link=Upperdeck
Melanie,
Thanks for all your great comments! Not many exciting creatures in the grab sampler. However, a little bird flew on board today when we were taking water samples. It seemed utterly exhausted, and actually allowed one of the scientists (Jade) to pick it up. We tried to give it a little water and a quiet place to rest out of the way. I'll try to get Alanna to post a picture tomorrow when we have some free time.
Just a thank you to Dr. Krest for responding to my questions.
Best wishes for the data compilation and analysis!
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