|
Location: off the coast of Gulf Shores,
AL 30 08.01
N 87 54.57 W
Last night at about 8:00 we came into several large
patches of Moon jellies. Dr. Graham and Jon decided to put both the
camera and the Tucker Trawl in the water and see what we could find.
Although Jon saw very little from the camera's point of view, a patch of
jellies were caught in the Tucker Trawl. After John and Wrong John
pulled the net from the water, Barbara and I took them inside to
count. The jellies filled up a 48 quart cooler! We weighed and
took the diameter of each jelly and then Heather cut the gonads out so John
could sex them for part of his research. At the end of the night I had
jelly parts all over me! I had a blast. Today started off with
Dr. Graham and some others diving. However, visibility was so limited
that they didn't stay in the water very long. After that we did a CTD.
Barbara and I filtered water, this time also adding a combusted filter to
our samples. As we were finishing that, John and Wrong John did
another Tucker Trawl so Barbara and I got to count more jellies today.
The first trawl had a few Moon jellies and 62 Ctenophores (Comb
jellies). The second and third trawls had a couple of Moon
jellies. After dinner a few people are going to dive again.
Hopefully they'll have better luck this time. Dr. Graham said we're
going offshore soon.
|
