more pictures

I am sure you want to see more pictures, so here are a few more (Thank you LULU for sharing some of them with the group). Click here to see album, here is the link: http:  Estrella's GU1101 pics (you can see the captions there, enjoy!

Need a napkin?

Oh yes!, I found my way to the the dinning room...

Does anyone need a napkin?

Kenenth Esquivel

Hi am Kenneth Esquivel Iam a part of this year's Spring Plankton Cruise on the Gordon Gunter. Iam an Assistant Fisheries Officer from the country of Belize, in representation of the Belize Fisheries Department. This is something new for me but geeez iam enoying every second of it learning and seeing new stuff for the first time. Presently iam working in the night shift "also" with Estrella and Sennai who have been teaching me the methodologies and protocols of plankton collection and i think aim getting pretty well at it. Thanks guys hope to learn more as we go along.

Where is Ayla today?

Hey, have you meet me?

I will present a new post everyday showing a location where you can find me onboard of the Gordon Gunter. By the way, my name is Ayla and I am Laura's little dog.

Guess where am I today?

My current nightmare!!!

There are several factors that can modify the transport of eggs and fish larvae, ocean currents and circulation are on the top list. By learning about the currents and circulation, we can estimate where the larvae came from and where they could go to.

One way to measure the actual water currents is by using an ADCP. What is an ADCP/ well, an ADCP is lovely instrument installed on the haul of the ship that sends acoustic signals into the water column and "profiles" the currents. The ADCp is connected to the storage data system of the ship to record all the information and we are able to watch the currents in real time (live) on a screen.

As an oceanographer, my sweet dream is to collect good data of currents. but one day, checking on the ADCP screen something happened, the currents seemed to go so wrong!, What todo ?, well checking everything (even going into small and dark confined places), super Ryan Smith from AOML gave us a piece of advice and in a calm voice from the phone he said to John, "no worries" the data is coming ok, it is just a display problem. After that, I felt some peace of mind, the terrible nightmare vanished becasue we have GOOD DATA OF THE OCEAN CURRENTS, it just means we have to do additional processing of the data, but good data nonetheless. So, I am looking into the ADCP screen and praying for collecting current data that could help to explain why the larvae are there and where they could go.

MOCNESS, oh dear MOCNESS

Welcome to another beautiful day aboard the Spring SEAMAP 2011 cruise aboard the NOAA Ship Gordon Gunter. We have been quite busy so we haven't had a lot of free time to blog it up! My name is Estrella and I am on the night watch with Sennai on this leg of the cruise.




"Larger" fishes collected, including some Jacks and
a large bucket full of plankton on the right (Photo: NOAA)



So, what is plankton and why do we care about it? Well without going into much detail:  Plankton is made up of a mixture of invertebrates (baby crab, shrimp), plants, bacteria, fish (eggs, larvae) that drift in the upper layer of the ocean and serve as food for larger fishes and adult fish as well. We collect plankton to find larval or baby fishes in particular larval Bluefin Tuna! I am sure a lot of you had some kind of tuna in your lifetime - that's a pretty important fish if you ask me!



Bluefin Tuna (larval specimen ~7 mm long = tiny!!) Photo: NOAA, SP



For yesterday's station, we were using a MOCNESS which is a Multiple Opening/Closing Net and Environmental Sensing System. This equipment has many nets and can collect plankton from discrete depths (ex. 25 meters 'bins' = we'll start at 100 meters and close it at 75 meters). It is connected to a computer inside the ship and the operator can control when to close the nets. We also have other instruments attached to the frame to measure salinity, depth and temperature. Its important to know at what depths you collect your organisms because we can then combine that information with oceanographic information collected during each station and throughout the cruise.

MOCNESS coming out of the water - this one has 6 nets attached (Photo: NOAA)

One of the many challenges of executing research projects is gather the data. "Data" is collected in many ways, sometimes instruments record temperature or wind data; sometimes its as simple as dipping a net in the water and catching whatever is swimming around at the time. Although there are quite a lot of scientific and sophisticated experiments carried out every day all over the world, most of us that have been out on a boat/ship/field station and are trying to do some kind of 'work' - know that Murphy's Law is the law of the land out here. For instance, our net played some tricks on us yesterday when the MOCNESS (aka "Olivia") decided to trick us into thinking it worked properly when it actually failed miserably and after about an hour spent in the water... no plankton was collected :(  We were very dissapointed because we had calm weather and an opportunity to capture our targeted species (BFT). Luckily we were able to get it to cooperate after some TLC from our Field Party Chief Denise, our ET Patrick, watch leader Andy and our Chief Scientist Dr. Lamkin. I got to test it out last night and it worked! hooray! I was glad that Olivia worked last night and it successfully collected lots of plankton! Hopefully, there are some Bluefin tuna in our samples ... next is sorting all those jars full of plankton!!! (but we'll leave that for another post).



many, many boxes full of sample jars with ... yes you guessed, PLANKTON!



PS: I will try to translate this blog into spanish after lunch since we are a 'multinational' effort!  

Spring SEAMAP Plankton Cruise blog is Back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello All,
       I'd just like to take the time and welcome everyone to, and thank you for taking interest in this blog. As stated above the whole purpose of this blog is to give you a little idea about what goes on here on the R/V Gordon Gunter during the Spring SEAMAP cruises. Take a look back at the post from April, 14 from last year; This should give those of you who are unfamiliar with this cruise a little history and background into the type of research being done out here.
       Well this years research cruise began on Thursday, March 24th as we departed lovely Pascagoula, MS for open water, adventure and lot's and lot's of larval fish....  As we did last year the first leg of the cruise will be targeted sampling using satellite imagery to identify Sea Surface Temperature and Chlorophyll fronts in the ocean that correspond to regions of high larval ABT (Atlantic Bluefin Tuna) abundance from a habitat preference model.
       However different from last years cruise this year we are including the northern Caribbean into the sampling area, precipitated by the appearance of ABT larvae in Caribbean waters off the Yucatan Peninsula during the previous year's sampling. So despite a 7 day transit that included stopping in Cozumel to pick up some of the other members of the Science party including researcher's joining us from the Mexican fisheries agency INAPESCA, ECOSUR, and another from Belize. And the celebration of my 30th birthday somewhere north of Grand Cayman... Don't worry we had a cake. We are now sampling just North of Jamaica, and are about halfway through the first leg of the cruise. So far we have had some scombrid (tuna) larvae but nothing confirmed as ABT. The weather has been fair, and despite covering a lot of ground we still have a ways to go before our first stop back on land again.
      Anyway my hope for this years blog is to get a variety of people posting to give views from all aspects of what goes on during the cruise, I'm hoping to have even a couple posts in Spanish from some of our Spanish speaking colleagues here on the ship. Anyway enjoy and please feel free to post comments. If you have questions about anything feel free to ask, and I or another member of the science party will try to answer you as soon as possible.
    Well take care for now
Sennai

      Me looking out over the fantail as we pass by the tiny island of Navassa.