Bering Sea Day 17-18: Engine room tour & sea stars

Welcome to my world... Where you can't differentiate the sea from the grey foggy horizon, day in and day out... the Bering Sea! We have gotten into the far north part of the Bering Sea, where the diversity in the benthos (mud) increases. The excitement of today was that there was a big "chlorophyll max" which is a spike in the amount of chlorophyll in the water. That pretty much indicates that there is a bloom of algae (aka phytoplankton) in the water. The number on the computer showed around 34, whereas before it was around 0.28 to 3. They were excited yesterday to see a peak of 5, and today 34! Don't ask for the units... it's complicated... (Why do you gotta go and make things so complicated! ala Avril Lavigne). Oh! And I saw a fin whale today after dinner! Verycool. I saw its head come up and I thought it was an orca fin, but then it resurfaced with its body arching and its fin coming up, so then I thought maybe it was a humpback. I ran up to the bridge and the observers had seen them too, and told me they were fin whales. And the last thing is that everyone is wondering the answer to my question that I asked them - which is: How many filtration devices do you think are on the RV Thompson? How many ways and for how many purposes can one group of scientists filter water?! You will soon find out... I'm making a video.
We went on a tour of the underbelly of the ship. This is Chief Engineer, Paul Morrissey (far right) talking to our group in the shop to John (far left) and Colin (the rest of us are in the room too but not in the pic), right before we go into the loud engine room.
John decided to keep his headphones on even in the shop. Just cuz he's cool that way! :)
This was a tape collection in the shop! I don't know why I found it interesting, but I did. There ya go.
Paul showing us the control room.
Part of the control room.
The engines in the Engine Room - it is quite loud in here!
You can see the group going around the Engine Room here with their headsets on.
The biodiversity of the benthic (ocean floor) community increases as we go further north and this shot I took today. Notice a lot of seastars, brittle stars, and a sea cucumber. There are also lots of worms, but there are worms in sediments further south also.
This is a pillow star (Ctenodiscus crispa). I took this near the microscope and the lighting is funny but you can see the little star structures all over its exoskeleton, which I think is cool.
Diane Stoecker looking in the microscope at critters - aka microzooplankton.
Diane pouring water that came up from the CTD into bottles for her experiments.
Alison, a tech who works for Diane. Guess what she's doing? You got it! Filtering water!
Diane getting her microzooplankton out of her experimental incubators on deck.
This is a common occurrence. When they send the CTD overboard, everyone comes into the computer lab to watch the computer monitor to see the data as it is collected live. This was today.
I went through all my pics, and am posting some that I hadn't put up previously. So the following ones are not all recent but they get us up to speed. This is a bittle of preserved krill that someone will be doing some sort of analysis on back home.
There are a disproportionately high number of red beards on board. I think there are 5 guys with bushy red beards. One day I'll get a pic of them all together but this is Kyle, who is training to be an "AB" (Able Bodied Seaman) and Brian, the bird observer. This is up in the pilothouse.
We see these birds day in and out. They are northern fulmars. They come in a variety of colors - from the white of these guys to grey and brownish.
This is a close-up of the fulmar. It's not the greatest shot, but you get the idea.
Alexei and Lorelei putting out the Calvet net at night. I had a photo of Alexei putting out his net in one of my earlier posts. He mostly studies copepods and amphipods which are zooplankton but not microzooplankton! The photo is a little dark, sorry.
Eric, a tech who works at NOAA. I haven't put any pics of him so I thought I would take one! He works on nutrient analysis - aka nitrates, phosphates, and ammonium.
Megan and Tracy putting the krill into their incubators at night.

Bering Sea Day 16-17 - totally radical plankton

It's easy to tune out when one talks about plankton. But seeing pictures makes it come alive a little bit more. Planktonic organisms can't move against the currents so float. Phytoplankton (phyto=plant-like) create their own food, and examples include algae and diatoms, and zooplankton (zoo="animal-like") consume other organisms. I believe all of these photos were taken from organisms sampled in the Bering Sea, if not on this cruise on previous ones.

A larval pollock - the fish that grows up to become your "fish stick" and "artificial Krab." These are the critters that Ebett (Elizabeth) Siddon is looking for in her MOCNESS sampling. Photo courtesy of Tracy Shaw, who works at Hatfield Marine Science Center in Oregon.
These are diatoms - a phytoplankton. They have silica "skeletons". Photo courtesy of Diane Stoecker.
Laboea aka "ice cream cone" microzooplankton. Micro=small so microzooplankton are the smallest of the zooplankton. One of the PIs on board, Diane Stoecker (my roommate) studies "mixatrophs" that actually consume organisms that photosynthesize and it allows THEM to photosynthesize for a few days by using the ingested phytoplankton's plastids (ie chloroplasts that photosynthesize - remember biology 101?). Sometimes they are phytoplankton and sometimes zooplankton - hence the term "mixatroph." This species is a Mixatroph. Photo courtesy of Diane Stoecker.
This is a dinoflagellate that ingested something. I'm not sure if it's a mixatroph or not...Photo courtesy of Diane Stoecker.
Now here come the really cool plankton, at least in my humble opinion. I know my roomie loves microzooplankton and especially mixatrophs because they challenge conventional wisdom and "complicate" things, but I'm partial to slightly bigger and more recognizable animals! This is a planktonic larval jellyfish. Photo courtesy of Tracy Shaw.
Limacina is a swimming snail, but still a zooplankton because they can't swim against currents. Photo courtesy of Tracy Shaw.
Clione is a swimming snail, also known as a pteropod. Don't they look like angels? Photo courtesy of Tracy Shaw.
A larval squid. How is it that even baby squid are adorable?! Photo courtesy of Tracy Shaw.
A larval octopus. Is that not the cutest thing or what? Photo courtesy of Tracy Shaw.
This is a krill. They look like little shrimp. There are 5 species in the Bering Sea, at least 5 they catch regularly. Photo courtesy of Tracy Shaw.
Rasta krill here has a parasite growing out of its back! Photo courtesy of Tracy Shaw.
And my favorite, since I'm a Cancer on the zodiac... crab larva aka zoea!
Now for some other random shots from the past couple days. This cracked me up...
The cruise's co-chief scientist Nancy Kachel, oceanographer at NOAA, showing me the computer screen readout from when the CTD goes down to collect water - and data. It measures salinity, temperature, chlorophyll fluorescence (which tells you when there's a bloom of algae aka phytoplankton), and some other things.
Colin had mud on his face and I took some pics then Rachel decided she needed mud too so Colin painted some on for her.
Aren't they cute - mud pie makers extraordinaire!
I didn't have many pics of just Rachel - I love this shot!
Colin hoisting his mud core like a trophy!
Russ Rejda pushing the CTD out of the CTD-Bay. It's heavy! I wanted to include more pics of the various people on the cruise.
Hoisting the CTD out to the Bering Sea.
Fred, who works for NOAA, sampling water. Common murres which are like the penguins of the Arctic/subarctic. Photo Courtesy of Diane Stoecker.
Jessica Cross filtering water! Imagine that. Little krillies on a microscope.
Ken Feldman working the winch.
Capt John giving the man overboard drill on the deck.
The famous Post-it note science haiku wall. Blow it up to read some!

Bering Sea Day 14-15: Walrus!

I just typed a whole entry and it got deleted and I have to go to bed so I'm not writing it again... The gist is, I miss my kids, my man, my friends, my gym, my church, hugs, girls nights out and... the SUN! Everyone is writing science haikus on post-it notes. Here is mine, the rated PG version.

Holy Cow! Walrus!
"I can go home now," Sarah.
No. You really can't.

That was an actual conversation, well minus the Holy Cow! Walrus! part. :)

Here are some pics.

The most exciting news of all time, oif this entire cruise was... I SAW A FREAKING WALRUS! Yes that is right. Not just a walrus, but a freaking walrus. If you've been following this blog from the first time I knew I may be going, or my tweets, or Facebook, you will know that this is probably THE reason I came here. Well besides work to pay the bills.
It was very rare to see a walrus out at sea. I think it's a female or subadult because it's relatively small as far as walruses go, and it had only small tusks.
Sooooo cool though!!
Kali McKee filtering water...
Megan filtering water...
Tracy and Megan having entirely too much fun looking at the flow cam (a microscope that magnifies the things in the seawater)
Tracy and Megan showing me how the incubators on deck work. They put the krill in the clear bottle which goes inside the dark bottle and spins for 24 hours.
Sample bottles of the mud team.