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7/17/2018 The images are of the open ocean early afternoon, .... and the last one is of the Kenai Peninsula with the sun setting in the background.
Still not a boat to be seen on the water.... just humpback whale blows in the distance, birds and Dahl porpoises...
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 7/17/2018 We are back on the Gulf of Alaska line and are finishing up with the stations that we were unable to complete due to weather last week. Still 150 miles off shore!We started at 6 am with a CTD cast and the cruise's final CalVet cast. We then went on to two more stations. Can't believe two plus weeks at sea has passed me by....
On this trip, I have been referring to this trip as my "oceanography and plankton boot camp" cruise. The amount of information and understanding of our oceanic world and especially the Gulf of Alaskan ecosystem, has been staggering and needless to say, tough for me to quantify. When I get back on land, I will undoubtedly roll up my sleeves and delve deeper into these very interesting and dynamic sciences The cool thing was that everyone on board this boat were willing to share their experiences and answer any questions that I had. In some cases I felt like I was in college again, but this time the profs were my friends and, weirdly enough, my housemates(boat mates). It wasn't all science as one might expect . We laughed, shared stories of our lives, families, ventured into politics and played games ..... We all had a role and common goal in understanding how the Gulf of Alaska functions.... these guys look at this ocean as a living and breathing entity, alive in every sense of the word.  7/17/2018 A Gulf of Alaska Sunrise 6 AM Monday the 17th.... Like no sight I have ever experienced! Simply amazing!
A great way to start a day! Today we are finishing up with the Kodiak line and then heading over to the Gulf of Alaska line(GAK). Transit times between lines will be about 10 hours, but that is all dependent on weather. What is one to do during this down time? Plenty - talking with the boat's captain, or skipper, sharing stories about the sea..... sharing stories about family and life back in the North-east.... Understanding how a 21 day research trip doesn't just happen - there are months of planning and coordination and good amount of money to fund it all! Spending time on a boat in the"Middle of Somewhere" is one of the greatest experiences I have had the opportunity to experience. 7/15/2018 Prime rib and Alaskan king crab legs in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska.... 100 miles off shore....made for some of the best surf and turf I've ever eaten!!! And it was ALL YOU COULD EAT
Despite a beautiful day of blue skies, and a ridiculously BLUE ocean, we had to stop operations due to the sizable waves.... and when they are big, it makes for an incredibly difficult and dangerous retrieval of the CTD... The seas began to lay down shortly after dinner, so Dr. Hopcroft decided it would be best to resume at 6am... 7/15/2018 Humpback whales are pretty much everywhere! They have not been closer than 75 to 100 yards though... but we can see their dorsal fins, and when they are diving, their big flukes... I could see them clapping their pectoral fins in the distance... too far for pictures... when there are whales in the water there must be food. Their primary food is krill which is a type of crustacean that also is a part of the plankton community.
And with all the food their is also an abundance of birds. They like to get the scraps from the whales... in our CalVet cast we got s small amount of some baby krill.. The black spots on the bottom are pteropods- a type of mollusk... The orange little creatures are a type of mollusk that have small flippers to keep them in the water column. 7/14/2018 The CalVet Net is also equipped with two different types of screens: 50 and 150 microns. There are 1000 microns in one millimeter. One millimeter is about the width of a strand of spaghetti. A single human hair is roughly 100 microns. 50 microns is about a half a human hair. So these screens capture anything greater than half a human hair. So many Protists and all bacteria would escape.
Today we caught many larval crabs... yes, crabs start there life cycle amongst and are a part of plankton community until they become too large and dense; When this happens, they become part of the benthic or sea floor community. There were also pteropods (pronounced terro-pods). The Greek translation of pteropods is wing-foot They are considered zooplankton - heterotrophs! These little guys are small snails with wings and pseudo pods. These wonderful little critters are found throughout the world Both organisms are greater than 1000 microns(1.0 mm)... so they can be readily seen with the naked eye... Why research plankton? One of the reasons scientists are interested in collecting zooplankton is because certain planktonic organisms are capable of building hard structures of calcium carbonate, concentrating it as shells and thus can act as indicators such as temperature change, change in the chemistry of the water, and they can tell us how they can be affected by environmental changes such as an increase in C02. 7/14/2018 Another item on the Cal Vet net that must be constantly checked after each cast is the flow meter. This helps the technician determine how much water has passed through the net on each cast. On each one hundred meter cast each net will allow 7 cubic meters of water to pass through. With a set amount of water passing by, the technician can determine roughly how many organisms, or a rough population estimate, there are in a 100 meter column of water. The Methot, bongo and mult-nets all use flow meters! i was surprised to find out that these flow meters carry a price tag of about 250 dollars each! The image below is a Bongo Net. The openings are slightly larger than the cal vet nets and take a bigger sample of sea life.   7/14/2018 Seas have calmed down considerably... 4 to 5 ft swells.... we traveled to the our final destination- the Kodiak Line. We were in transit all night long .... and there wasn't much sleeping to be had in the surf of 8 to 10 foot waves... so... kinda tired when I left the rack, dragging a bit.
On the CalVet we had an equipment malfunction - the first after 20 + casts - a tiny spring on a clasp gave way and the netting was hanging over one of the openings. Doesn't sound like much, but when you have a delay of a half hour that pushes everything back, and these seas can change quite quickly and that delay could lead to who knows what.... maybe a another equipment mishap or possibly an injury while retrieving the mighty CTD... or someone having to come late for dinner.... so you never know! Another thing to think about is spare parts, of which there has to be because Home Depot is a long ways off.... A stockpile of spare parts must be on hand at all times! 7/13/2018 Today has been a partial bust due to the 8 to 10 ft seas..... we stopped deploying the CTD at 4 due to safety. Then we removed nearly 1/2 of the mass of the CTD in hopes that it was easier to deploy and retrieve ... and then the waves started picking up.... so we are waiting for a break.... but it doesn't look good.... we are probably headed for Kodiak Island for shelter .... and we will get started as soon as the weather breaks....
Icy Bay ......Icy BayIcy Bay 7/9
Made another attempt to enter Icy Bay..... and we made it..... Entering the bay had a real weird feel to it..... different....not a sole to be found... and real calm... silent. Kinda like something out of Narnia....totally magical.... the ice that drifted by was part of the Icy Bay glacier.... this ice must be thousands of years old.... I instigated the skipper and the cook to get some ice for some future cocktails and they were determined.... A closer look at the ice and you can see its clarity.... and as I remember, the more the glacial ice is compressed, the clearer it becomes - the gasses get squeezed out.... clear as glass .... so good that Thilo and I decided to have a coke with it and celebrate the midpoint of the cruise! We also did a CalVet and a CTD cast in the bay. The CalVet produced what we call Arctic Relic species that are leftover species, with their own unique genetic makeup. These plankton were leftover species from the last glacial maximum.... and exist in this unique glacial runoff estuary.....  7/12/2018 Did you ever wonder what the sun looks like as it's setting in the Gulf of Alaska, 150 miles at sea?? Wonder no more.... here it is....
7/13/2018 At station and 100+ miles in the Gulf, Thillo landed this 10 pound female coho salmon.... what a nice surprise!
 7/13/2018 In transit back to the outermost station - Gulf of Alaska #15 - aka - GAK 15 . Gray skies with the winds picking up! Winds from the south east, up to 20 knots(22 mph) and generating 5 to 7 foot waves.... and they are coming in the fan tail of the ship - makes for a difficult but challenging day of science! Am really loving it!! We are over the Aleution Trench .... 4500 meters deep, give or take a meter or two.... ( approximately 15,0000 feet) GAK 15 will be another intensive station.... two 1000 meter CTD casts, two CalVet casts and a multinet cast.... The last image is of the sunset.... things calmed down as we finished out the day ....  7/12/2018 About 100 miles off shore and nothing but ocean..... and more ocean. Peaceful.
We've dropped the CTD down to over 1000 meters or roughly 3000 feet... The ocean has transitioned from an emerald green to a cobalt blue...and incredibly clear! The picture is of the CTD at 10 meters or 30 feet down - that's some incredible visibility! Why so clear ? It's because there are not enough nutrients to sustain life out here. Limited life results in less particulate-matter that would otherwise prevent light from penetrating the water column.... The Second picture is of the boys in the ships superstructure and wheel house... Captain Jarrod, Toby and Dan the Alaskan Fish and Wildlife observers.... 7/11/2018 The somewhat hostile waves that haunted and hampered this crew for three days have given way to a virtually flat ocean-the calm "after" the storm.... so peaceful out here... variable winds at around 5 knots... and 60 degrees.... T shirt weather!!
Already worked three pieces of equipment today - CTD, the multi-net and a CalVet net.... The salt from the previous nights waves has been left behind as a fine dust and as shiny little crystals on the gunnels of the ship.... 7/11/2018 Soon this will only be a good memory of times well spent with some very interesting and knowledgeable people from a variety of backgrounds! The youngest on board is 20 and the oldest is 72. Every person on has their specific role and occupies a certain niche on board the boat. From the captain all the way through to the chef! (Notice how I didn't use the word down - in order for the ship to function properly everyone one board has to do their part and if one part fails the whole operation weakens or crumbles. This is the meaning of team. ) Days are also divided in two - two 12 hour shifts... I'm so glad I am on the day shift! Science is ongoing and anything but boring. There is a ton of data to be gathered - both quantitative and qualitative - in the pictures you can see neocalanus christatus, a type of copepod. There are 12+ species of copepods common to these waters and well over two hundred species that have been identified in the Gulf of Alaska.... quite the community of zooplankton....
Although the sun is shining , the seas have been anything but cooperative... 6 to 8 foot swells makes the most menial of tasks more difficult .... so for breakfast, instead of one of my favorites, honey nut Cheerios, I went with my winter time go-to....oatmeal... So much easier to manage when the boat is rockin!! In the video you can see how difficult it is to deploy and retrieve the CTD when waves are present.... we managed to snap off the PAR and one of the handles which was crazy considering it weighs around 300 pounds! Today we are out in the Gulf of Alaska... and we are out about 80 miles off shore!! All ocean and nothing but! Had four casts today .... so it was a perfect 12 hour day.... Saw a pod of killer whales but they were too quick to get them on film... 7/10/2018 That's Bear glacier in the background... the streaks running down the middle are referred to as medial moraine... where the two valleys converge and deposit all the grinder up sediments from the thousands of years of the glacier grinding down through the valleys....
Some nice swells that make deployment of gear difficult today..... but doable! Today is a an intensive station - CalVet, CDT and multi-net casts...... we are also taking samples for genetic sampling and analysis.... Last night stayed in the bay as a shield from the weather, but still experienced 10 foot swells... I actually put the rail up on my rack to prevent me from rolling out and face planting on the floor.... lol!! The rocking motion did for me what it does for babies ... knock em out!! 7/9/2018 Made another attempt to enter Icy Bay..... and we made it..... Entering the bay had a real weird feel to it..... different....not a sole to be found... and real calm... silent. Kinda like something out of Narnia....totally magical.... the ice that drifted by was part of the Icy Bay glacier.... this ice must be thousands of years old.... I instigated the skipper and the cook to get some ice for some future cocktails and they were determined....
A closer look at the ice and you can see its clarity.... and as I remember, the more the glacial ice is compressed, the clearer it becomes - the gasses get squeezed out.... clear as glass .... so good that Thilo and I decided to have a coke with it and celebrate the midpoint of the cruise! We also did a CalVet and a CDT cast in the bay. The CalVet produced what we call Arctic Relic species that are leftover species, with their own unique genetic makeup. These plankton were leftover species from the last glacial maximum.... and exist in this unique glacial runoff estuary..... The multinet opens and closes at different depths. When the multinet is put in the water or deployed, all of the nets are closed. When the net reaches the maximum depth, one net opens and stays open until it reaches a set depth and then closes. The idea behind the opening and closing of the nets at certain depths allows a biologist to identify communities of organisms at different depths, salinities, and at different temperatures.
Dr. Suzanne StromHALF WAY! We are at the halfway point of the cruise and it’s a funny place because it feels like we have been on the sea forever but then you start to think, how do I only have nine days left? At this point you have met most of the science team, but we still have a few more to go. We are looking forward to circling back with members of the team you have already met including Chief Scientist Russ Hopcroft to get their perspective on how things have gone. Last night we experienced some rough weather, and it was really something to see things go flying off desks as we rocked and rolled while trying to secure all the loose items we could. Working in this environment is definitely challenging but it does not slow down the scientists! It’s moments like this where the quality of loving what you do becomes the defining theme. Some of the nicest moments have included the breathtaking scenery (particularly Icy Bay), a pod of humpbacks, a variety of species of albatross, and of course the fabulous array and diversity of zooplankton. We are definitely looking forward to more in the days to come! |
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