Live midwater squid on board
Wow! what a night. Worked the night watch 5pm to 5am. We caught so many critters from the deep. The Education Team helped to deploy, retrieve, and process THREE IKMT’s (mid-water trawls), TWO MOCNESS (multiple net plankton tow), and two ZOOPS (acoustic monitoring of zooplankton). We had multiple species of squid, many types of fish larvae, lots of shrimp and krill, and, of course, interesting fish. I think my new favorite group of animals is the Pteropods or “sea butterflies.” They are so weird yet beautiful and such a treasure to find among the other species. I woke up this morning to find samples from a couple of box cores (sampling the top meter of the seafloor) and am helping with sorting. So far, they have found urchins, polychaete worms, snails, and an eelpout (a burrowing fish). I personally sorted out a couple of baby seastars, a baby sea slug, a mysterious and elegant sphere that looks like a bucky ball and may be a sponge, as well as some baby clams. I am looking forward to helping the teachers with our “virtual collections”–a collection of photographs of the many species we have found during the cruise–as the actual specimens will be going back to SIO to be analyzed by the scientists. I’m on the noon to midnight shift today. The weather and the sea are beautiful. What a life.
Education At Sea 
how hard was it to stay up for all that time to do your work? did you get time before to sleep or did you have to stay up then too?
Did you catch more sea critters during the night or in the early morning?
That is a pretty awesome looking squid. What kind is it. Did you guys find any new species yet?????
how hard was it to stay up on the late night shift? does the excitement of finding something new help you fight the sleep?what was the depth where the “sea butterflies” were found?
What species of squid is that? It is pretty neat-looking.
Wow! That squid looks really tiny, Exactly how big is that squid? Does anyone on board like calimari? Did you find any other fish or inverbtabrates that interests you?
Those fish look absolutely crazy, I would love to see some of those.
oh my gosh, I’ve never heard of half of the fish that was caught. Which fish was the most interesting to you? Do all those fish only live in deep water?
I like the photo of the squid, i personally think its cute! 🙂 I also looked up pteropods, and I must admit they look pretty sweet! Did you enjoy sorting out all those critters? Did you ever find out what that sphere was? Well I’m looking forward to answers thankyou, if not thats is just fine. Hope you all have a safe and great time! bye
The research sounds very interesting. I’d love to see pictures of the creatures you sampled! I just looked up what a sea butterfly looked like and they seem so intriguing! They’re beautiful and very unlike animals I would associate with the sea. I’m learning a lot already just by going through and reading all of these blogs!