At the end of our first sailing day, we were rewarded with the beautiful view of the sun setting in the Atlantic, and this morning we reached our first sampling site: Baltimore Canyon. This is one of our more shallow sites with a depth of approximately 400 m. Our AUV Sentry was deployed right after breakfast and conducted a dive of about 6 hours. Part of the dive was used to do some technical tests and then Sentry started collecting our first samples. In the big black tubes on Sentry, water is filtered to collect small larvae swimming in the water column. We collected samples right above the seafloor and in 200 m depth. While retrieving the samples from Sentry in the afternoon we got unexpected visitors. A sunfish and a pod of dolphins swam by the ship. What a nice celebration of our first sampling!
Now we are all busy in the lab sorting through the samples to pick out any larvae of benthic invertebrates that we can find. They are all sorted into taxonomic groups, imaged using a microscope and then preserved for further analyses.
Meet a Scientist on Board
My name is Sinja Rist and I am a Postdoc at the Technical University of Denmark. Five weeks ago I came to the US to work at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology until the end of this year, so I made it just in time to be a part of this research cruise. Generally, I work on the effects of multiple stressors on meroplankton but on this cruise I will help wherever it is needed and thereby get to know many species that I have never worked with before.
While we were sorting our Sentry samples, we were given a quick overview of the Jason ROV, observing all the different cameras, how samples are going to be collected and stored, and even got to view the control center. In the control center, events are logged into a system, and we note the time and location of each important sight or activity done during the Jason dive. Three scientists will be in the control room in 4-hour shifts; the science lead, the event logger, and the video logger. The science lead translates what scientific tasks are to be done to the pilot, the event logger updates the logging system, and the video logger controls highlight videos as well as oversees multiple systems are working properly.
Today we also learned about different shifts we will be taking on throughout the cruise to ensure we can process all our data and be awake for the Jason dives. We will have three shifts; the “Daywalkers”, the “Humans”, and the “Nightcrawlers”. Daywalkers sleep from 4pm to midnight, the Humans sleep from 12-8am, and Nightcrawlers from 8am-4pm.
Tomorrow morning, Jason will launch at 6:15am so we all have to get up early! A big day of science is ahead of us!