Yesterday we went out on the Weatherbird II research vessel. It started out as a rocky ride because we were going against the waves, but the way back was much smoother. We used a CTD (Conductivity Temperature Depth) device to collect water samples in Niskin bottles. These bottles have two open ends that will close when we send the signal on a computer. This enables us to gather information at various depths and know exactly where that sample came from. The CTD was much bigger than I thought it would be!
I sorted all of the sponges from the dredge at station one. I didn't know much about sponges before so it was interesting to see so many varieties. Some of them look very similar to corals, except that they are soft to the touch, unlike corals which are solid. This is a picture of the sponges I sorted.
Today in the lab we sorted all of the shells that did not have any living organisms in them, as well as counting, identifying, and drawing plankton. Tomorrow we were supposed to be going out on the Weatherbird II for day 2 of research, but the weather has been getting bad (Tropical storm Andrea just formed - crazy timing right?!), so we may just go out for research in the bay or not at all. Below is a picture of the plankton, the cloudiness is due to how concentrated it was.
Overall it was a great experience, and I love being a part of the hands-on research.
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