2014 Barbados to Bermuda Chief Scientist Training Workshop

Ever since we left Barbados, we have been watching flying fish jump out of the way of our bow wake. A bow wake is the wave that the ship makes in front of it as it pushes water out of the way. Flying fish are small, about five to fourteen inches, give or take a few inches. They are blue and silvery. And they do really fly over the waves! They do this to avoid being eaten by predators. When they sense our ship approaching, they think that a larger hungry creature is honing in for a snack. They have evolved large pectoral fins (the fins on either side of a fish, near the head and gills) that serve as wings. They leap out of the water, and glide over the sea surface in the air, fleeing from a would-be killer. It is not easy to stay alive as a fish or a plankter (singular of plankton) living in the ocean. Your predators can come from any direction, left, right, up and down. In the open ocean, there is usually no place to hide. For this reason, animals have evolved with specialized methods for avoiding being the next meal. Flying fish are a perfect example of a special adaptation – a fish that can fly! Other examples of adaptations for survival are camouflage, and schooling behavior.

A flying fish cruising over the waves.
Photo by: Paul Suprenand

Flying fish are not just cool; they are also tasty! They are the national dish of Barbados, where you can find many a vendor selling flying fish sandwiches.

A man in Barbados prepares flying fish fillets. Photo credit: Paul Suprenand

Here is a poem I wrote about flying fish:

Flying fish, what a delectable dish,
but also pretty cool flying in a school.
These little guys really do fly,
bouncing from trough to crest.

When the bow wave bulges from ship or shark,
the flying fish heads away from the dark.
Out of the blue and into the sky,
away from sharp jaws glittering fish fly.

Most fish jump, then hop and then,
Plop! Back into the water and
met with inevitable slaughter.

Not the flying fish, no!
Up and away they go.
shooting toward the sun.
Away from danger into a world
all the more stranger.

An ironic twist for our favorite fish:
they cannot breathe air as one might wish,
if one were hurdling over the waves.
And instead of gliding to safety,
may end up on deck as a dinner quite tasty.

- Karen Stamieszkin

Kat Allen (not a sea monster) after a successful plankton tow, heading back to the lab with a container of zooplankton.

Getting ready to view zooplankton under the microscope.  Fresh zooplankton are often more colorful than preserved zooplankton.  The preservatives we use to bring them home to study often causes the animals to loose their bright blue, green and yellow color.  Having the opportunity to study them freshly captured is a real treat – allowing us to observe them in their close to natural state – how they look in the water, how they swim and how they react to light and shadows.

Getting ready to view the animals under the microscope. At the top, there is a pteropod that has eaten some copepods (look for the blue eggs). To the upper right is a live ostracod – you may only have seen them as closed shells, but they actually contain miniature crustaceans. A string of salp eggs looks like a pearl necklace. In the lower left corner is a part of a polychaete worm (photobomb!)

Sometimes we even catch fish in the nets as well. This fish is not a sea monster, it is actually called a hatchet fish, a deep sea dweller that has large eyes to see in the dark. This is actually a larval fish that is about 3 cm long, about 1/3 of it is the head at this stage.

One of the largest copepods in the ocean, Euchaeta sp., can be found in abundance in our samples. It is easy to find, because it carries a large set of blue eggs. Check out the dish picture and see if you can find one.

This funny looking animal is a pteropod, a type of mollusk (similar to a snail). The winglike structures protruding from its glass-like shell allow it to move through the water like a bird flapping its wings.

Not all things we find in the net are obviously animals. This small group of spherical shapes is actually a single-celled animal called a foraminiferan (“foram” is the nickname of this cute little blob).

One of the more unusual crustaceans we have been finding are these stomatopods, notable for having eyes that are on stalks that stand out from its head, looking out for hatchet fish probably.

Sometimes the copepods have ornamentation (feather like appendages) that cannot fit into one picture. These feathery tufts help the copepod to maintain its position in the water column and to avoid predators by pretending to be twice as long.

- Jarrod Scott and Adelaide Rhodes

Some of you may have noticed that the log in was not working for commenting on the blog.   To fix this we have REMOVED THE LOG IN.  To post a comment from now on, just click on “leave a comment”, type in your name, then type in your question or comment, and click “post comment”.  Please note that without the log in, your comment will not post right away, but will wait until one of us approves it.  We will try to approve your comments very quickly though.  Also, you will see that when you go to post your comment there is a space to fill in your email and website information.  YOU DO NOT have to fill in your email or website to post, just your name so that we no who to reply to.

We have lots of great posts planned about tiny sea monsters, what its like to live and work at sea on a research ship, and introductions to the crew of the R/V Atlantic Explorer (the guys who make the whole thing happen).  So keep visiting and keep the great questions comming!!!

Steve Tuorto

Left to right: Jarrod, Tina, & Adelaide deploying a plankton net

Seawater is teeming with microscopic life – a weird, wild, underwater zoo. There are gelatinous blobby creatures, animals with tiny legs and claw-like appendages, and organisms so strange-looking that they could have come straight out of an alien movie, except most of these creatures are no bigger than a grain of rice. Many of the scientists on board are studying these micro-organisms, collectively known as plankton. To catch them, we draw a net through the water, similar to the way you can pull a butterfly net through the air to catch insects. My plankton net is taller than I am, and before I cast it into the sea I attach it to large wire reel called a winch. The winch operator then slowly turns the reel and lowers the net into the water, and we pull it gently behind the ship for a few minutes. Sometimes, a wave will wash onto the deck and soak us as we’re working (see photo below).

When the net comes back, the bottle on the end of the net is full of plankton – it looks like a green-brown soup, full of tiny darting, wriggling things. We carefully unhook the net and take the bottle quickly to the lab, where we can see what we got. That is the most exciting moment for me – that first look through the microscope into an alien world, full of strange things. A lot of plankton have clear bodies, and you can see their organs inside. Some are bright colors, like orange or blue; some are even iridescent or glowing. Sometimes I see organisms eating each other, or stuck to each other. I would not want to be caught in a plankton tow myself … I imagine it would be like someone dragging a giant soccer net down the sidewalks of New York city for a while, collecting people and dogs and food trucks and trash cans all into a great big pile.

Microscopic image of a pteropod: Look closely to see if you can see the organisms its EATEN!

The scientists studying plankton on this ship are all looking for different kinds – copepods, which look like insects, pteropods, which sometimes look like snails with wings, and many more. I am collecting foraminifera, single-celled organisms that float through the water, catching food on long, gooey tentacle-like appendages called pseudopodia. They will eat almost anything that comes their way, and they can even catch and devour things that are larger than themselves. Foraminifera grow shells made of calcite (the shells look like miniature popcorn), and when they die, their shells sink. The sea floor is covered in these shells, which have been slowly accumulating for millions of years. If I can understand the relationship between the chemistry of these shells and the water in which they grew, I can apply that information to fossil shells and ultimately figure out what past oceans were like. In this way, we can trace the history of the ocean beyond the times covered by written historical records, before humans even walked the planet.

Blog Post Contributed by Kat Allen, pteropod photo by Paul Suprenand.

P.s. We’ve posted some more replies to the questions and comments left on our first post.  go check them out!

Tony demonstrating the immersion suit

Today was a big day! After breakfast, we had a meeting discussing the day’s plan. The ship departed at 9 am, and then it was time for Tony, one of the Marine Technicians aboard the Atlantic Explorer, to put all of the cruise participants through the ship’s safety drills. In case of an emergency, we all have to know where our safety gear is, where to meet, how to find and utilize the life rafts. We even had to take turns trying on the safety immersion suites.

Then it was back to business. Only a couple of hours away from Station 1, we needed to be ready to start deploying instruments and collecting samples. We only have so many days to be at sea, and we have to keep to a schedule in order for everyone to get their work done… but things do not always go according to plan. A few of the cruise

Retrieving a plankton net

Deploying a CTD

participants became sea sick, some equipment was found to be damaged, and the ocean was not as deep as we thought it was at Station 1. Some very diligent re-planning by our chief scientists and some great

Dexter holding his Mahi-Mahi

cooperation among the other participants saved the day. Our first set of plankton net tows and CTD cast were successful, and all in all, we had a ship full of happy scientists. One of the ship’s crew even found time to catch us a mahi-mahi for dinner!

Everyone’s day ended well after midnight, (except for the people on watch until 6 am… Yikes!), and the ship spent the whole night sailing so that we could be at Station 2 by 8 am in the morning.

Maureen Conte going over safety for the CTD garage

This morning (May 31st) we arrived at the ship at the port in Bridgetown Barbados. Dr. Conte, our cruise mentor, gave us a tour of the ship. During the tour she discussed safety at sea and pointed out that places around the ship which can pose safety hazards, like near big deck equipment such as winches and A-frames, are clearly marked with black and yellow stripes. After the tour, we had a safety briefing given by the Atlantic Explorer’s second mate Chris. By then it was already time for

Jon Cohen setting up his lab space

After lunch we began unpacking our lab equipment and setting up for our various research projects (To see more photos from today and others, check the Photo Gallery). In the afternoon, we had a visit from three Barbadian scientists: Dr. Edmund Blades and Ms. Katrina Hart, who are microbiologists at the Barbados Public Health Laboratory and Dr. Avril Williams, who is a chemistry professor at the University of the West Indies. Dr. Blades is also the local manager of the University of Miami’s atmospheric research facility at Ragged Point, Barbados. He gave us a short talk on the history of the Ragged Point tower and its nearly 50 year record of Saharan dust transported to the Caribbean from Africa, over 5500 kilometers away! Dr. Blades’s research has focused on the bacteria and fungi in theSaharan dust that remarkably survive this high altitude trip across the Atlantic.

Our meeting with Dr. Edmund Blades

We had dinner on the ship, and discussed our research plans for the cruise. Tomorrow is a big day, so many of us are turning in early. We want to be well-rested for the trip ahead!

Curious people often ask us how our work will change the world and benefit humanity. The truth is that most of the time we’re not sure. As we plan for the coming days at sea, our greatest hope is that we will learn something that no one knew before.

Post Contributed By: Maureen Conte, Lauren Seyler, and Steve Tuorto

P.s.  We apologize for the late posting and replies to comments and questions.  We are very busy and the internet is a bit spotty, but we promise to answer and post as soon as possible.  Even though the posts and comments say they are from one person, the questions and posts are being contributed to by all the scientists, so watch for their signature. We are super excited to be interacting with you all, so please keep all the great questions and comments coming!!

Welcome everyone and anyone! This blog is an effort to reach out to student learners of all ages (that includes adults!) to introduce them to oceanography, what oceanographers do, and to allow those interested to interact (in almost-real-time) with scientists while they do their science at sea!
From May 30th to June 9th, the scientists and ship’s crew aboard the R/V Atlantic Explorer will be working hard to study many different aspects of ocean biology, chemistry, and physics in a track across the ocean between Barbados and Bermuda. Please read to learn who the scientists and crew are, and to learn what they’ll be doing.

 Log in frequently during the cruise dates to see new posts about the work being done and about the day to day life of living and working on a research vessel.

See someone or something you like or feel curious about? Please post as many comments or questions about whatever comes to your mind. We aboard the Atlantic Explorer will answer your questions directly!