Sampling, Sampling, and More Sampling

When the MOC10 comes up to the ship, it is time for the whole science team to leap into action.  To someone not familiar to the process, it may appear to be utter chaos but each person on the team has a role and things usually run like clockwork.  I say “usually” because occasionally, there is a hang-up.  One hang-up has been the equipment that runs the MOC last night and today.  There has to be communication between the equipment on the net frame to the computer that monitors the entire process for a successful tow.  We have a wonderful MOC operator, Gray, who is the master of this equipment and has been out with us for every cruise.  He has been working hard to make sure our science can happen!  He has spent hours trying to troubleshoot and solve the mystery problem and so far, we have been able to deploy the nets!  Thank you, Gray for all of your hard work with this!

 Our MOC operator, Gray, prepping the nets

We are waiting for the second trawl of the trip to come up now and we will processing our deep-sea organisms soon!  Stay tuned for some animal highlights in the following posts…  We collect things from microbes to large fishes and here is a couple of photos from today!

Photo 1:  Jon Moore, Tracey Sutton, Tammy Frank sorting a sample           Photo 2:  Travis Richards catching a Blue Runner