Day 6 - Senior Cruise 2013
The last day of the Thompsons open ocean stations
The multi net is a very unique sampling tool that allows biological oceanographers to take five zooplankton net tows at varying depths. The deployment of this device was a first for the Thompson.
1/2/14
Watch 1 – Audrey Furlong
Today was the last day of the Thompsons open ocean stations. Some cheers could be heard, since most of us are getting ‘cabin fever’ waiting to see a precious piece of land on the horizon. The morning began like the other days, sleepy eyes and bed head scientists walked like zombies through the breakfast line at 7:15 am. After cups of coffee, pancakes, fruit and a pep put into the scientists step we ventured down to the fan tail (the back deck) of the Thompson to began to set up for the last open ocean station.
Today’s scientific activities included a deep sea CTD cast, deployment of an ARGO float, and a phytoplankton net tow. The scientific day begin with the CTD cast, led by the cruise water boss Christina Ramirez. The CTD cast went down to 1800 meters and collected the needed water samples on the way up. The CTD cast also had a bag of very colorful Styrofoam cups, which shrink in size on deep CTD casts. During the CTD cast (which takes about two hours from deployment to recovery) a phytoplankton net was tossed over the back of the fantail by Lauren and myself. This was done for one of our professors Kathy Newell just for science fun. Once the CTD was recovered to the surface, samples were collected for specific projects, and then the CTD was hosed down with fresh water. Now it was time for Charlie to deploy his ARGO float, which will never be seen again!
Throughout the day there were little breaks in science time that resulted in some fun. There was yoga and mini workouts done on the fantail and some people attempted to create their own Styrofoam cups drawings, but many hired the cruise artist Madi Shipley to create a masterpiece on their Styrofoam cup. Besides the science and the fun that was had, the thing that most people looked forward to were the amazing meals created by the head cook Sarah. With food in our bellies and the science data collection done for the day, the ship took off and went full steam ahead for the next scientific station on the horizon.
Watch 2- Brianna Sweeney
DAY-WATCH (without the Pamela Anderson suit)
Today was the last day of our four “Open Ocean” stations. The prospect of seeing land again tomorrow is putting a little more pep in our sea-swaying steps. We are shaping up to be real scientists! Data collection is acquired from the stern bay (back deck) where the sun can be quite intense. It has gotten to the point where I am glad to wake up and see some overcast skies- my desire to get a nice tan has faded with the acquirement of two painful sunburns. There is a pack of us sunkissed lobsters on the ship now. Apparently even SPF-55 cannot be trusted at the equator.
Data collection today was the same as the past three days. We have a nice routine going, and things went very smoothly. Today we started with a deep CTD cast to 1800 m. All samples were collected at the appropriate depths. During the CTD we also set out a phytoplankton net. Last but not least, a final ARGO float was deployed into the South Pacific for who knows how long. We bid our farewells and called it for the afternoon. The next data collection wouldn’t occur until close to midnight. Onto the next station we went.
During the transit hours for the past few days, most people could be found intermittently coloring Styrofoam cups to be sent down in the CTD. As the pressure increases with depth, the Styrofoam cups collapse to about ¼ of their starting size. It is as if we have our own scientific Shrinky Dink machine in the form of a giant CTD. In addition to arts and crafts time, there is a lot of reading and eating to be done. Last night in celebration of the New Year, we had a BBQ dinner on the stern deck. Sarah, the cook, really outdid herself. There were ribs, wings, buttermilk cheddar biscuits, three kinds of potatoe-esque salads, fresh fruit, and dessert bars that resembled something like the most ultimate smore you could ever dream up. Good food, good tunes, and a few awesomely appropriate Hawaiian shirts made for a relaxed and upbeat evening to keep our sea-faring spirits in tact for the second half of the cruise.
Watch 3 – Sonia Brugger
Overview of events:
Station 8 (Open Ocean)- CTD (300m and 1800m), ARGO float deployment, Phytoplankton net tow (day and night), Multi net
Station 9 (Muli Guyot)- CTD , Bathymetric survey, Multi net
The last two days events consisted of multiple multi-net deployments as well as some CTD casts and Multibeam surveys. Overall everything went well, with there being no major malfunctions that come to mind, however our overall operations could have gone smoother. There were a few disjointed periods where it was unclear as to what was going on and our overall cruise plans were changed countless times. Currently our cruise plan was changed so that we will no longer be doing small workboat operations, which significantly affects Lauren, Madie, and Nicolette’s projects. However by cutting out our transients between the Muli Gyote seamount and American Samoa we managed to save a lot of extra time and were able to distribute that towards other people’s projects. In order to make sure that our “coral team” is able to complete their research we will be arriving in Apia, Samoa earlier than planned where we will rent a 15-person passenger van and drive to suitable coral sites in order to do snorkel surveys. While it is nice that we were able to make the best of a bad situation I am a tad frustrated by the lack of prior planning which resulted in us being denied the ability to do research in American Samoa.
Focusing on the exact operations that went on during the last two days the most notable, both deployment wise and data collected wise, was the first multi net deployment. The multi net is a very unique sampling tool that allows biological oceanographers to take five zooplankton net tows at varying depths. This allows them to look at a vertical profile of the zooplankton community throughout the water column. The deployment of this device was a first for the Thompson. That was rather exciting, and it went really well for a first time deployment. When the multi net was brought back on board and washed down we got to see a very prominent difference in the zooplankton community diversity as well as abundance instantaneously. The coolest find was what appeared to be a parasitic shrimp that had laid its eggs and developed inside of a jellyfish. The first thing that came to mind when I saw the shrimp taking over the jellyfish’s body was the movie Alien, and then I remember a similar parasitic relationship showed in the deep sea episode from BBC’s Planet Earth. I never imagined I would actually see that sort of thing in such a shallow cast.
Moving onto phytoplankton identification. (my preferred way to use up a few hours if I’m not playing darts or talking to the crew) Unlike the last few days of plankton tows today I had to modify the way that I collected my sample due to restrictions placed on multiple over-the-side operations at night. Since I could not collect a typical net tow I decided to take the cod end of my plankton net and filter water from our salt-water intake for a period of ~40 minutes. This plan actually worked relatively well, with the system seemingly acting like a natural filter of the bigger species, in this case filtering out the majority of radiolarians and zooplankton, which left me with the smaller species that I was unable to see during my earlier tow samples. It would have been rather interesting to do a direct comparison between a regular surface net tow sample and the filtered intake sample. This would have given me a greater understanding of how greatly the distance “traveled” changes the given sample proportions.
When it comes down to actual species identification I got to see a more diverse phytoplankton community in comparison to the last few tows. When taking the night tows our main concern was discovering what species were causing the bioluminescence that we saw in the ships wake. We discovered the main cause of the bioluminescence to be the dinoflagellate Protoperidinium. I am a bit unsure whether we have a single or multiple species of Protoperidinium, since I was able to see some differences between some of the cells, however it could have just be due to general cell variation or beaten up cells versus different species. The main difference I saw between some of the cells was the prominence of the apical horn, with the majority of the cells having a very prominent horn that were at least twice the length of the antapical horns.
Another specie that caused me some problems with identification was the suspected Dissodinium cell, which is a genus of non-bioluminescent parasitic dinoflagellates with two successive cyst stages. However there is specie that Dissodinium is often confused with, Pyrocystis, which is a tropical oceanic dinoflagellate with a similar shape and bioluminescent cells. Looking at the two species identification guides I was unsure as to which species the cell was so I asked Kathy who believes it to be Dissodinium.
One of the last two events of the day was rather unexpected, but extremely cool. One of the crew, Brian, was fishing off of the fantail and managed to catch a dogtooth tuna that was ~20lbs. It was cool to see a tuna up close and I got a few nice pictures. I must say that was one of the most unexpected things to happen thus far. We also got to do a tour of the engine room, which was entertaining. It was rather hot and loud down there but it was fun to get to see a part of the ship that we generally don’t get to see.
Overall Experience thus far:
While I don’t have a lot of sea time under my belt, only one other long cruise, it appears that our particular cruise is way more unorganized than it should be. I guess I will just list some of the main points that drew me to this conclusion. Firstly due to the flight planning I ended up being the only person flying into Tahiti the day before the cruise. So I left Seatac airport at 6pm and arrived in Tahiti by 6:30am. Before I left I was in a bit of a stressed out panic due to general flying concerns (aka packing) but was also missing a lot of vital information about the cruise in general, such as what gate at the port the T.G Thompson was docked at. Nothing like having to google the Tahitian ports website and finding the incoming and outgoing ship schedule. While this ended up being less of a big deal when I got to the port, since the Thompson was right at the first dock as well as the dock setups being nothing like Seattle’s port system, it was still stress that could have been avoided by providing the scientific party with a simple manifesto that listed the ports name, the dock that the Thompson was docked at, emergency contact information for professors that were already in Tahiti, and maybe some details about how to get a taxi (since it appears a few students struggled with that). This was all easy information for one of the lead scientists to come by and would have probably helped the students that were not a part of the majority group that arrived on the same plane.
On the actual ship itself, there appeared to never be a finalized schedule, while this is generally the way science works, stuff not working/having to resample/having to push events back, my experience when talking to the crew is that our particular cruise has been changing our plans at a much higher rate than other scientific cruises. The main drawback of this is that it causes a lot of friction between the pilot house and the science party, not to mention the overall friction between the science party members who continuously have to fight each other for the limited sampling time. I believe one of my classmates summed up our daily scientific meetings (where we watched the professors go back and forth on whose students should get to sample) rather well “It’s like watching your parents fight”. What it comes down to when watching how everyone was reacting, is that there is not a clear enough figure head. It wouldn’t be the first time that one professor said one thing (and you trust and pass on that information because they are the professor) only to have another professor counteract that and say another thing.
My last example on how things should have been a bit more thought out comes down to the overall deletion of the American Samoa leg of our journey. I guess the main reason why were unable to do research in American Samoa is that we did not get the clearance from them to pass through customs (since going into international waters makes us an international ship) and do research. Throughout our whole planning quarter the “coral team” checked with professors multiple times to make sure that we would be able to sample in Samoa, since it generally requires some sort of extra paperwork to do research in another country. Each time they were told yes it will be fine, and they should plan their research around American Samoa versus Tahiti/Bora Bora because as an American vessel it should be easier to get clearance. Now generally common sense dictates that you may want to call the American Samoa customs office beforehand to make sure that you as a researcher would be able to enter their waters and collect samples, but I guess that either never happened or the Samoan customs agent did not give the correct answer.
While I have a feeling I may tick some people off by giving my honest opinion of what happened I believe it needed to be said. What it comes down to is that science is an ever changing thing. Yes it is awesome that as a senior we are allowed to go on this big research cruise and do our own experiment, but we need to remember that not everything is sunshine and roses. We are on a ship, things go wrong a lot, and you get to see a different side of people then you would generally see in a classroom. If there were flaws in your original plan or any sort of miscommunication that can and will easily come back and bite you. Lastly the ability to lead as well as take directions is a key to success on the ship; otherwise it’s just a constant game of herding cats.
The multi net is a very unique sampling tool that allows biological oceanographers to take five zooplankton net tows at varying depths. The deployment of this device was a first for the Thompson.
