Oh the places you'll go.....'er, well.... pass by anyway!

          Well since the only time we'll step foot on land after leaving Pascagoula are Georgetown, Grand Cayman which we just left and Key West, Florida, which we will be heading to shortly after we finish sampling along the Caribbean Coast of Mexico the boat usually doesn't get that close to the coast for much of the cruise. This year however we have been lucky/unlucky enough (depending upon how you look at it) to see the coastlines of a lot of Caribbean Islands and Central American Countries. Some inhabited some not, and thanks to the operations officer on board, we have learned a lot, he'll post a little about each island on the plan of the day after we pass them, and our Field Party Chief, Denice, has been able to document the occasions with the pictures posted for you below.

    Anyway thought you guys might be interested in seeing some of the coastlines, seen here in pictures from the back deck, which have delighted some and tortured others so far on the cruise. Enjoy!!!

 Sennai

Haiti

Haiti

Navassa

Waterspout off Navassa

Georgetown , Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

Isla Guanaja, Honduras

Belize

Mexico at night

The End......... of Leg 1!

Well Leg 1 of this year's cruise came to an end on April,10 as we pulled into port in Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands. I could think of much worse places to spend what initially was to be 3 days. It has been a very interesting cruise so far, as we have gone from Pascagoula Mississippi, to as far east as the western tip of Haiti. As I mentioned in my last post we had just begun sampling off Jamaica.

From what we saw in satellite imagery of SST and CHL, the water between Jamaica and Haiti upward into the Windward Passage, but more so around Cuba, provided some very interesting physical features possibly concentrating fish larvae and eggs, making it interesting for us to sample.
     Alas however we do not have access to Cuban waters again this year and some interesting features will have to remain un-sampled.

   However our survey limited to Jamaican and Haitian though we did have some stations with scombrid (tuna) larvae we did not have any that were determined to be bluefin. We did however notice large shifts in the larval assemblages over very short distances(< 10 miles between stations),  off the coast of Haiti. Anyway we continued to sample the upward to through the Windward Passage, and then turned around and went along the northside of Jamaica heading towards the Cayman Islands. We were close enough to Jamaica at one point while trying to test out the ADCP (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler - An instrument that we use to measure currents)  that we could pick up Jamaican reggae stations, "Come Down Selecta!!!!!!!!!!."  Pretty awesome you don't hear true reggae dj's like that anywhere else.
               But beyond that we headed into Grand Cayman on April 9th due to a concrete barge in our spot on the pier we were unable to pull in. So we had the view below teasing us for about a day, before coming into port on Sunday, April 10th... Unfortunately most things in Georgetown, the main town on Grand Cayman are closed on Sunday. But I was able to find a few places to go. Mainly I was just hoping to find a good dive shop and schedule a dive for the three days we were to be in port.....