Visit the kelpforest....

runsamuck decided to spend part of our tax refund for a new laptop (a fairly cheap one), and until I get the other one fixed, I was putting some programs I use fairly regularly on it. One was Apophysis which I haven't actually used since version 2.something, and it's now up to 7x. I was noodling around with it - I still need to go through some tutorials I've found - but I was surprised to find this rather spiny blue shark hiding within one of the original diffuse, cloud-like flames. Came up on the first mutation click and I liked the original color so I didn't change it. Also saved it with a transparent background so I can use it in something else, maybe.


Blue Shark Flame... by *senoritafish on deviantART

Sackboy visiting the Aquarium, and was trying to tell species of rockfish from one another (there are about 50 different species on the West Coast). In this pic are, a boccacio (brown), about three black & yellow rockfish, and a couple of canary rockfish (orange stripy), possibly some blue rockfish in the background. Also a strawberry anemone and a couple of sun stars.

Aquarium of the Pacific
Long Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
27 June 2010

( moar )

These are not Great Whites. I think they're silky sharks...

Copy paper
Los Alamitos CA
Kyocera Switchback phone camera
12 January 2009

Of course, most scientists are in term of their projects, which take on life as their children.

But some biologists especially, share a commonality with parents of very young children. Pre-potty-training children. In that you develop a fascination with poop. My boss forwarded me and my coworkers the following article:

Whale Shark Poops on Camera - Scientists Rejoice!!!!

If you're not anywhere near mealtime, my coworker found the actual video:

Shark-cam captures ocean motion

I suppose if McCain/Palin had found any similar experiments funded with government money, you can imagine the brouhaha they would have raised. However, studies like this are quite legitimate in terms of fisheries management and looking at the health of entire ecosystems. As the scientist in the second articles says, "One way to work out what is going in one end is to look at what is coming out of the other."

I work on a project that studies what are called Coastal Pelagic Species, that is, species of small fish that form large schools near the coast and are thus a target of fairly large fisheries by humans. The major species in my area are Pacific mackerel, Pacific sardine, northern anchovy, and market squid. Another term for the these species is "Forage Fish," meaning that numerous other animals - larger fish, birds, and mammals - use them for food as well. My agency once did a study of sea lion poo, maybe not as extensive as the articles linked to, but looking through for the undigestible hard parts - squid beaks, otoliths (fish ear bones), scales - that could then be identified to species and the proportion of that species in their diet. This became one variable in a large mathematical model called a biomass assessment, that predicts how much of a particular species is out there swimming around this year, and how it should be divided up to a) keep enough adults out there to spawn for next year, 2) allow enough fish to be eaten by all the other animals that prey on them, 3) provide a percentage of the total to allocate to the people who fish for them for a living. Throw climate change into the mix - the reproduction of many of these species is heavily tied to water temperatures - and it begins to make things pretty complicated.

Something to think about the next time you enjoy a tin of sardines. Or not...* ;)

________

*Enjoying the sardines that is...it definitely should be thought about...

New (to me, anyway) fish at the Aquarium of the Pacific; a bowmouth guitarfish from the Indian Ocean. We have guitarfish here, but they look quite different.

Bowmouth guitarfish
AOP, Long Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
16 August 2008

( more ... )

A sea cucumber puckers up. Well, I did it again. It was a special kid's morning in early February at the AOP, and as per usual I took 119 photos that I have trouble deciding on. Ooh, 7 am is way too early to be at the Aquarium!

( more critters )

Wow, there's only one more day of fishing after today. Friday will be spent steam back to San Diego, cleaning our cabins, the lab area, refueling and then back the Scripps Marine Facility.

I was in the final chapters of HP last night, but a circuit breaker kept blowing and the power outlets, including the one my bunk light was plugged into. It went out again right in the middle of a chapter; with a groan, I decided I'd better just go to sleep, since we had to be up early anyway. An hour or two later, the light came on in my face.

Up early this morning and baited - seemed darker this morning than it has been. Today we are west of San Nicolas Island and it's as calm as I've ever seen it out here - not that I've been here a whole lot, but anytime I have been it's always been rough and blowing. Another albatross alighted as we were setting and seemed to be floating out there all during the soak.

Finished HP this morning. Awwww! I knew it, I knew it! And that's all I'm sayin' fer now...

Just before hauling, I went out on the bow and could see some blows and splashes off in the distance near the horizon - some whales, but so far away impossible to tell what kind. They seemed to be stationary though; feeding, maybe? The haul attracted even more albatrosses. By the time we were done, there were six of them. A few people threw some baits to them, but there were enough gulls also around that the poor albatrossses were outmaneuvered for most of them - built for gliding, they're not quick enough to catch things falling out of the sky like the gulls are, and they're rather ponderous to take off. Still it's pretty neat to see that many of them in one place.

The wind picked up again for the second set - I don't think the sun ever came out completely, but at least the swell was down and we were able to haul fairly quickly because nothing was tangled; however, I picked a job that guaranteed some movement for warmth - de-baiting (probably the only kind of "de-baiting" I'm good at). Only about three blues (two tiny) and a small mako.

A few minutes ago, E. and I went out on the stern and watched the phosphorescence flash in the wake as the water churned, like tiny flashes of lightning, or underwater fireflies.

And I've spent the downtime today catching up typing, so I'm about to send off a few emails and then hit the hay.

	DFG Block	Lat:	Long:	Mako	Blue	Pelagic Stingray
Morning set :	816	33.295°N	119.912°W	2	2	0
Afternoon set :	815	33.198°N	119.755°W	1	8	0

After a soak of about three hours, the set is hauled. A small mako coming up on the line - the line across the top is the mainline; the shark is hooked on the gangion. As the line comes in at the side, the gangions are taken off, and hooked sharks are walked to the stern where the scientists tag tag them.

( ...And I got to help tag today! Whee! )

Roomie's Teacher@Sea log: (apparently took a break today)

Btw, is Vista supposed to start so slowly? I bought a bargain laptop the day before I came out here, and jeez it takes forever. Maybe I just have too little memory or something, but sometimes it takes about 10 minutes...

Woke up leisurely this morning - for once I didn't have to pee in the middle of the night. I reached the my last clean shirt and the sweatshirt that I keep especially for wearing out on boats was starting to smell like fish, so it was time to do laundry. Unfortunately, all of my dirty clothes didn't quite make a full load (required) so I added my bath towel and considered my sheets as well, but they weren't necessary. I was paranoid about it being done before the next haul, as I didn't want to be taking up the dryer if someone needed to use it. I kept running down to check where the cycle was and since the laundry room is three decks below my cabin, I think I got quite a workout running up and down the steps. In spite of that, I finally finished the book. Yay! Actually I thought I'd finish it quite a bit before this, but it's not quite as fluffy as some others, and besides is 800 pages of fairly small print.



The high flyer and sea anchor in the water.

We're a bit northwest of the north end of San Clemente Island today, and the weather is quite a bit calmer than what we we've gotten the last two days. The haul this morning seemed like we hit a mako swarm. Ten were tagged and released and one escaped; unfortunately, four seemed to have struggled too hard and died. I did the data recording of how each hook came up; still with bait, half a bait, no bait, or what species it had caught.



Mako on the line.



Float coming - splash is a shark below the surface.

Pre-lunch was busy as each dead shark was weighed, measured in several different directions, DNA samples taken and the grad students all took all kinds of blood and tissue samples from each shark.



Weighing a dead blue.



Parasitic copepod - sometimes there are so many of these on the trailing edges of shark's fins, they look like they're wearing fringe.



Preparing to take blood and DNA samples.




Apparently after this cruise gets back, they are supposed to take a bunch of congressional staffers out the next day for a few hours - there'll be a bunch of stations with project descriptions all over the ship, like a self-guided tour. In preparation for this, last night a bunch of people were making little drawings on Styrofoam cups, which we'll be sending down with the CTD to 1000 fathoms, where they'll be crushed to the size of shot glasses. I did one too - we'll see how it looks after tonight.

I baited hooks for the afternoon set because I felt a little guilty about standing around and not helping with the processing, however, there were so many people busy taking data and collecting samples, there wasn't much for me to do. The afternoon haul only resulted in four sharks, two makos and two blues, but I got to help tag! It's been a long time since I've done this - while the other biologists held it down, covered its eyes with a damp cloth and worked on getting the hook out, then had me poke the tag in, give it an oxytetracycline shot, and then rototag its dorsal fin. One large male mako got satellite tagged, with a SPAT tag through its dorsal fin and a satellite tag in place of the spaghetti tag. These makos seem so fat compared to the ones I've seen before, but that may be because when we used to do this, we had no way of raising larger sharks out of the water, and we tagged them with a pole. A couple of these big guys had little remoras attached to them. They are so beautiful close up. Photos of that in the next post! Whee!

Well, I'm waiting for my camera card to finish downloading and I'm going to go climb in bed with Harry Potter. The book, I mean.



The view while lying in my bunk...

	DFG Block	Lat:	Long:	Mako	Blue	Pelagic Stingray
Morning set :	810	33.182°N	118.95°W	15	0	0
Afternoon set *:	832	33.097°N	119.033°W	2	3	0

*mako satellite tagged

Roomie's Teacher@Sea log: http://teacheratsea.noaa.gov/2007/eubanks/pdf/eubanks_log7.pdf

Well, we heard last night there was something haywire with a particular fan, which is pretty important. If it can't be fixed, we will have to go back to San Diego for parts. But for this morning, we are drifting in Pyramid Cove at the south end of San Clemente Island, while the engineer and his helpers take the thing apart and work on it.



This big crane seems like a bit of overkill...



There's been a story on the news about a freaking ship engine that fell off a truck on a San Diego freeway and crushed several cars - the chief scientist was joking that we should just go pick up the fan from that thing, because it certainly wasn't being used, right? In the meantime, some people are fishing for rockfish, but it's never long before the Jordan drifts off whatever reef they were over, and they start getting sanddabs (small flatfish).

Sanddabs.


But someone did get a nice lingcod.



One of the ensigns had the deckhands clean out the seachest, that is, a sort of boxy filter for the seawater intake on the bottom of the vessel. They found a handful of these little rock crabs inside it, They're normally found in the rocky subtidal; I'm thinking they settled out there as planktonic larvae and found enough to eat until they got to this size.



There was a small pod of common dolphins lounging around (at least they didn't seem to be moving around as fast as when we've seen them before), but again, they didn't come close enough to the ship to get a pic.

So, the morning was generally spent being a bit lazy. Sat and chatted with the Mexican biologist about our kids - turns out she's also working on her masters and her husband is getting his PhD - he encouraged her to come on this trip so he could go to Australia later with less guilt. Got a lot more read on JS & MN - the last volume really speeds up, and the story gets quite a bit more exciting. I know several people in my book group said that they liked the book, but it was possible to put it down and not go back to it right away, maybe pick up something else instead. That became harder to do as it approached the end.



The fan problem was finally fixed and we were able to make the afternoon set about 3:00 pm. I suited up to help set (well, my rubber boots and work vest), but all the spots were taken, so I took a lot of pictures instead.

How to set a longline -

First - Release the Kitties Highflier...



Take the gangions out of the barrels in the proper order, otherwise they will make a big rat's nest...



One or two people bait hooks, another hands the lines off...



(and makes sure they don't get tangled...)



These get handed to the clipper, who takes the line, holds the clip and drops the bait overboard (very important - you don't want the hook to grab anything on the boat or maybe somebody's boot as the line goes out). Every 50' there are a pair of crimped on metal stoppers about 6" apart; the trick is grab the line with your left to steady it and snap the clip on between the stoppers with your right, without making the winch operators slow or stop the line going out.



The rhythm is five hooks and then a float (which holds the line up near the surface). The floats clip on to a loop in the line, which is coiled in a basket, clipped end to end. Unclip the lines from each other, clip the float to line on one end...



Same thing, hold the clip, throw the float overboard, and snap it on the line between the stoppers. Don't drop it! Or they gotta get out the little boat to go get it - and everyone will razz you until someone else does it...



And so on, until you get to the end of the hooks, or maybe you run out of bait. Then you can sit down...



...and watch all the floats bobbing off into the distance...



Several large blues caught on the afternoon haul, and a very large Mola mola (ocean sunfish) about a meter long and two thirds that wide, which got a satellite tag. He forlornly flapped his fins back and forth and rolled his eyes until he was released. The biologist who tagged him told me they have weirdest science fiction-y slime on them which does NOT come off anything. And it stinks.



The shark's eyes are covered with a rag to keep it from panicking and thrashing...



Big tail...



For dinner, the cooks set up a BBQ on the aft deck, and grilled about six different kinds of meat. The menu is really set up for carnivores - there's meat in almost everything. I feel bad for one of the grad students, who's a vegetarian. Quite often there's not a lot for him to eat except a few side dishes, and quite a few of those have bacon or some other leftover meat in them, because they're trying to use up the leftovers. Even I feel like it's too much sometimes. I don't know whether they didn't get the message or what, but I think he's been on this cruise since it started. Poor guy was putting potato chips in a bun for dinner.



I can't believe it's been a week already.

	DFG Block	Lat:	Long:	Mako	Blue	Pelagic Stingray
Afternoon set :	867	32.693°N	118.382°W	3	7	0