{"id":8387,"date":"2015-08-18T07:59:37","date_gmt":"2015-08-18T15:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mlmlblog.wordpress.com\/?p=8387"},"modified":"2020-10-23T12:02:37","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T19:02:37","slug":"tales-from-the-field-in-antarctica-post-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/2015\/08\/18\/tales-from-the-field-in-antarctica-post-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales from the Field in Antarctica: Post 6"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Jamie Sibley Yin<\/h3>\n

Dr. Valerie Loeb is an adjunct professor at Moss Landing Marine Labs. Currently, she functions as an independent Antarctic ecosystem research scientist collaborating with Jarrod Santora of UC Santa Cruz. In April, she headed out to sea with a new NSF funded project entitled \u201cPilot Study: Addition of Biological Sampling to Drake Passage Transits of the \u2018LM Gould'\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0The following are updates from the field by Jamie Sibley Yin who is in charge of communications.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>

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05\/02\/15 - Fish for Days<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Palmer sunrise.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We are on another fishing trip.\u00a0 We left a day early from station because the seawater pumps failed in the Palmer Station aquarium and all the fish died.\u00a0 It was tragic, and the need for more fish was urgent.\u00a0 Since this leg of the cruise was dedicated to the fishing group, and we were not sampling, I was left with little to do and so helped with the fishing efforts.\u00a0 This included deploying the pots and trawling.<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/a>First we deployed the pots, which are left out for 24 hours. \u00a0We had to prepare bait for the bait bags that lure the fish into the pots.\u00a0 The bait is hung on the mesh inside of the pots by large, industrial safety pins. The irresistible smell of slightly rotten fish lures the Notothenia coriiceps<\/em> (one of their target fish) into the metal pots. \u00a0I use a large kitchen knife to slice mackerel and sardine into chunks.\u00a0 The partially frozen fish are easy to chop but some of the fish have thawed, instead of creating firm bite size pieces of fish, my knife mashes them, brown guts ooze onto the plywood I\u2019m using as a cutting board.<\/p>\n

Over 100 lbs of fish later, and the bait bags are done.\u00a0 The marine technicians (MTs) load them into the pots.\u00a0 The pots are then lined up on the back deck of the ship in preparation to be pushed off into the water.\u00a0 They are kept close together in their groups of four, the rope that links them together is coiled atop each one.\u00a0 We move them as a unit, which means four people need to move them at the same time.\u00a0 It takes all my body weight to shove the pot across the deck into the line.\u00a0 They are pushed into the water by the MTs, we will retrieve them in a day.<\/p>\n

\"Minke<\/p>\n

The LMG Olympics are here, aka time to pull in the fish pots.\u00a0 Deploying them is pretty straightforward but pulling them up is a whole other kettle of fish. \u00a0It takes six MTs and four scientists to coordinate the reeling in, and unloading of the pots.\u00a0 The boat gets as close to the pots as it can and then drifts towards them.\u00a0 Once the head MT, Jack, thinks the boat is close enough, he takes a four-pronged hook and lassos the buoy.\u00a0 The buoy has a GPS on a pole attached to two large orange balls, which are in turn attached to a set of pots.\u00a0 There are four sets of pots--16 in total.\u00a0 The buoy and balls are hauled onto the deck, coils of blue rope are reeled in and set aside. \u00a0The 1st<\/sup> pot comes up, it\u2019s full of fat Nototheniids, their pectoral fins splayed, trying to stabilize themselves as we roll the pot over the deck, their mouths agape as they gasping for water.\u00a0 Kristin, one of the PIs, unlatches and rips open the pot and hands me a wriggling fish.\u00a0 Its\u2019 whole body flops in protest, mouth wide, I hold it like a baby and walk swiftly to the aquarium room where I drop it into one of the tanks.<\/p>\n

\"Squid<\/a>
Squid and pteropod.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trawling is exciting because of the sea life that is pulled onto the deck from the ocean depths.\u00a0 Hundreds of sea stars, milky white octopuses, bryozoans, sea cucumbers, wriggling spiky amphipods, gelatinous tunicates\u2014my eyes can\u2019t pick out everything in the tangled squirmy mass hauled on to the deck.\u00a0 I go to bed as images of sea spiders and mystery fish flash through my mind.\u00a0 I could have spent hours picking through the by-catch, commanding the creatures to identify themselves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jamie Sibley Yin Dr. Valerie Loeb is an adjunct professor at Moss Landing Marine Labs. Currently, she functions as an independent Antarctic ecosystem research scientist collaborating with Jarrod Santora of UC Santa Cruz. In April, she headed out to sea with a new NSF funded project entitled \u201cPilot Study: Addition of Biological Sampling to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":8265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[41,114],"class_list":["post-8387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drop-inblog","tag-antarctica","tag-fieldwork"],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"MLML Student Life","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8387"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20566,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8387\/revisions\/20566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}