It has been a very busy couple of days here on the Knorr. I haven’t received very much sleep. But then again, none of the science team has either. We have been a little ahead of schedule so it was decided that we could stay on station at a pretty interesting site for a longer period of time and due some diurnal studies, meaning, how are the organisms and ecosystems we are studying changing as we cycle through daytime to night. I am working on a project on phytoplankton so this was especially interesting for my work. So I was up several time thorough out the night collecting water samples and analyzing them.
*** St. Paul Island only a few miles away ***
We headed to a particularly productive area right between the Pribilof Islands. As you can see from the photographs you can just barely make out St. Paul Island. As usual everyone scrambles to get his or her experiments in the water. A familiar face on the deck is Ebett Siddon who is a graduate student working on zooplankton and juvenile fish on this trip.
Ebett: Master of the MOCNESS
She frequently uses the MOCNESS Sampler, which allows the researchers in her team to open and close bottle at specific depths. It’s a pretty good-sized device so it takes a fair amount of skill to operate it.
The sediment core people have been just as busy. They pulled up a core with a very cool deep water shrimp. Notice the large reflective eyes on this creature.
***Deep water shrimp with large reflective eyes ***
There is a lot of life around here. When I got up this very early this morning to collect samples there were some porpoises hanging around one of or floating sediment traps. There wasn’t enough light to get any pictures. My bird survey friend have promised me some great pictures of Albatross so stay tuned.
Date
Expedition
Weather Summary
Cloudy with a little morning rain
Temperature
41
Wind Speed
7
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