Day 2 at USFSP Day 1 at sea

Yesterday we spent a grueling 15 and a half hours at sea aboard the Weatherbird II. It was my first time aboard a research vessel of any kind or of a ship of it's size. Due to the current tropical depression forming in the gulf, the seas were a little bit rough. While in the bay, the waters were calm, but once we entered the gulf we were met by an onslaught of waves that were 5-7 feet. This pursued in several of my peers, as well as myself, falling victim to sea sickness. Fortunately, my bout of sea sickness lasted only until we reached the first station, which was about 30 miles offshore or just past the continental shelf. We performed five procedures at each station. The first was a CTD test of the waters. I was rather surprised by the actual size of the device.

Next we performed two procedures that we used to analyze plankton-The nueston net and the bongo net. The neuston net is so named because it collects the plankton from/near the surface of the water, or nueston plankton. The bongo nets collected the plankton that live about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way down the water column. They earned their name from the shape of the nets, as can be seen below. It was really cool to see the differences between each net as well as the differences in plankton we collected at the two different stations.

Next we performed the Capetown Dredge. This procedure acts to collect organisms living in the benthic region by pulling a cage-like device along the bottom of the ocean. We collected a vast amount of sand dollars, crabs, coral, sponge, star fish and even a brittle star or two. This was actually the procedure I was supposed to help man, though I did help with several of the others. After we brought in the dredge we had to then perform the seemingly overwhelming task of sorting, identifying, counting and measuring each organism we pulled up. What's more is we had to accomplish this while the otter trawl was trawling behind us. 

The last test we performed was the otter trawl. We collected the fish and other organisms located near the seafloor. We actually collected a lot of fun things, but it was quite a feat to identify them all. The sea robin was one fish that I especially enjoyed identifying since it was so gratifying to finally feel confident in what it was after looking for very minute distinguishing characteristics such as a spot located between the 4th and 5th dorsal spine or the black bands on its 'wings'.

Once we finished up at the first station, we proceeded to travel to the second station which was just outside the Skyway Bridge. We performed the same procedures as before, only in a slightly different order and much more efficiently since we had done it once before and the entire science party (i.e. all the students in the course) was finally feeling well as the seas had calmed down some. After that we returned to dock where we disembarked around 3:30 this morning. Overall, it was a long, but very successful day. I learned a lot and it was simply amazing to see the diversity in the animals we caught.