Today was a quieter day on the ship because our dive was cancelled yesterday due to bad weather, meaning we did not have new samples to sort through; that being said, there is always work to do on a research cruise! Today was much calmer than the rough seas we experienced yesterday, which was a relief to those of us who were feeling seasick! We measured a total of 500 mussel shells and prepared buckets of seawater in our walk-in cold rooms to be ready for animals to be placed into once Alvin brought up the new collections. Our Chief Scientists, Dr. Craig Young, gave a lecture about the history of oceanography, teaching us all about early deep-sea exploration and how it has changed overtime. The evening was spent sorting through the animals from today’s Alvin dive, which included a variety of snails, mussels, lobsters, worms, sponges and clams. The team finished up the day in the lab by preparing larval traps and settlement arrays to be deployed during tomorrows dive at Bush Hill.
Waiting on the weather paid off today and Alvin went for its second dive of the cruise! Today was a training day for a sub pilot so two pilots (a trained one and almost fully trained one) went on a dive along with this lucky student (Hailey Dearing, right image). It was the second day at The Brine Pool, where we collected and deployed scientific equipment, took more samples, and enjoyed the deep sea and all the crazy creatures. It never got dull watching (and recording) infamous hagfish, known for swimming into the toxic depths of The Brine Pool, and the floating red sea cucumbers that tended to drift/faceplant into the submarine’s cameras. Once back on land, the initiation for new divers commenced! New divers of Alvin get a bucket of ice cold (sea)water dumped on their head at the end of their dive (with their consent, of course!). But, you can’t go for a dive in the ocean and not get wet, right?
