From the rooter to the tooter- the hunt for a home
By Dante Fenolio
Sea cucumbers are echinoderms – related to starfishes and sea urchins. Sea cucumbers have an interesting body plan that includes something known as a “respiratory tree.” The respiratory trees are highly branched systems (two per animal on either side of the sea cucumber) that take water in and out through a cloacal pore. The flow of water is used in respiration. Now consider the “pearlfish.” These fishes are a moderately diverse assemblage – but they have one thing in common… they inhabit the digestive tract of sea cucumbers. They use the water flow going in and out of the sea cucumber to locate the cloaca… then they swim right in. Often times these fishes live alone but sometimes, a pair will live together within the same sea cucumber. One group of pearlfishes harm their host by consuming their gonads and other internal organs – a truly parasitic relationship. But with the rest of the pearlfishes, the fishes do not do any harm while the sea cucumber serves as a home base.
On the hunt for the Black Swallower!
Hi!
My name is Hannah Johnson and I am currently pursuing my Master’s of Science degree in Marine Science under Dr. Tracey Sutton at Nova Southeastern University. I am lucky enough to attend my first DEEPEND/RESTORE cruise on R/V Point Sur this year. While the focus of my thesis project relates to the reproductive habits of the deep sea fish genus Chiasmodon (Scombriformes; Chiasmondontidae), my predominant purpose on this cruise is to help record the collection of all the deep sea fauna we find.
MOCNESS Monsters!
By Lisa Rose-Mann
Hi! I’m having a great time on my first research cruise. Having worked with samples from previous cruises I have longed to be able to join the DEEPEND crew. I really wanted to see the MOCNESS in action! This is a net system that opens and closes at different depths (for this cruise, 0-1500 m down). The diversity of life we are finding is amazing and I’m completely blown away by the cool deep sea creatures and their adaptations I’ve been able to see firsthand.
Visting Viosca Knoll
Our first stop!
This area is a deep water coral reef on the upper continental slope dominated by Lophilia species (a deep sea coral). We explored this area briefly last year to investigate interactions between the deep scattering layer and the benthic community. This year, we are visiting this site twice to continue exploration with our first MOC deployment and retrieval happening last night.
This is our most shallow site with a bottom depth of 450 m and we towed the MOC10 downslope heading deeper to a depth of 402 m as to not disturb any benthic communities. This was a night trawl so we expected many deeper-living animals coming to the epipelagic zone (0-200 m) as there is a nightly vertical migration of animals towards the surface to feed under the cover of darkness.