Hi all,

Today is our last day of sampling. We started bright and early again at 6am. It rained a bit, but it was accompanied by a full rainbow arching over the boat. Nice way to start off the morning!

You guys are probably wondering how we collect all of the larval fish I showed you on the last blog post. Well, we deploy a bongo net off the back of the boat and a neuston net off the side. Both nets are brought on board and the samples are washed down into the codends. The contents of the codends are rinsed/poured and put into our sample jars. The samples are brought into the wet lab for a closer look and a potential photo. Some of the larger specimens (e.g., tunas, swordfish) are frozen for genetic analyses.

I set up a GoPro around the boat to show you guys how we sample at each station. Let’s take a look of some of our scientists at work:

Bongo nets and the sunset last night.                        Neuston net.

Rich is collecting water for the YSI and for the food web study.                 Nina is reading the water's temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen.

Rich, Nina, Jillian, and Jason are retrieving the bongo nets.                       Everyone's rinsing down the nets, while Michelle is recording the
                                                                                                          flowmeter data.

Jillian is pouring her plankton sample out of the codend.                           Jason and Nina are rinsing the bongo nets.

Nina and Jessica are putting the sample into the jar.                                Jessica is looking at a larval tuna under the microscope/taking a picture.

Alex and Cori just retrieved the neuston net.                                           Jillian, Alex, Cori, and Travis are sorting the neuston net sample.

Jason and Travis sorting through Sargassum.                                          Jason and Alex looking at our catch!

Dr. Michelle Sluis is the PI on the cruise. She is recording the data for each tow (e.g., start time, location, etc.) in the pictures above.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures!
-Nina

Left to right: back: Jessica, Alex, Michelle, Cori, Travis, Jillian, and Nina; front: Jason and Rich

HAPPY 4th of JULY!

Scientists still get to celebrate while we’re out at sea! Check out our tattoos! :)

Hello everyone,

My name is Nina Pruzinsky. I’m out in the northern Gulf of Mexico with Texas A&M sampling for fish larvae on the R/V Pelican. We’ll be out here from July 1-5th. The scientists onboard include: Dr. Michelle Sluis (TAMUG), Jessica Lee (TAMUG), Travis Richards (TAMUG), Cori Meinert (TAMUG), Jillian Gilmartin (TAMUG), Alex Southernland (TAMUG), Jason Mostowy (TAMUG), Richard Jones (FAU) and Nina Pruzinsky (NSU).

We left the port at LUMCON at midnight on June 30th and traveled to the first station (Station 48) during the night. We started our sampling around 10am yesterday. We finished nine stations during the day and did two night tows. During the day we are using a neuston net and bongo nets to sample for larval fish. The neuston net tows for 10 minutes at the surface and the bongo nets sample to about 100 m depth. At night, we only tow the neuston net. This way, we can compare the differences between day and night tows at the same station. Additionally, Alex is sampling for gelatinous zooplankton (jellyfish) for genetic analyses, Jillian is Gtowing another plankton net to look at the community structure of zooplankton, and Travis is collecting water samples in order to characterize the food web in the Gulf.

Yesterday we caught tunas, billfish, dolphinfish, flyingfish, eel larvae, remora, frogfish, triggerfish, pufferfish, rough scad, lanternfish (at night) and more! Check out the pictures below! As you can see, all of our fish are extremely small!

Today we started sampling at sunrise around 6am and have completed three stations. We already caught some tuna and dolphinfish larvae!

Stay tuned for more pictures and updates on the cruise!

R/V Pelican before depature. 

Larval dolphinfish (mahi-mahi).

Tuna larvae.

Triggerfish larvae.

Michelle and Cori preparing the neuston net.

Jillian setting up the plankton net along with the bongo nets.

We also were able to dip net a juvenile tuna last night for my thesis!

Cheers!
Nina

Hi guys!

Last night we cruised towards our southern transect. We arrived at our first station and began sampling at sunrise (6am). We've hit 10 stations so far today! We collected many of our targeted species and more!

On the boat, we use a camera attached to our microscope to help us take pictures of the tiny fish. Here's some of our catch:

Dolphinfish larva.

Swordfish larva.

Billfish larva.

Tuna larva.

Frogfish larva.

Alex found a siphonophore.

Cori, Travis and Jillian on deck and ready for the next tow! 

All smiles here!

-Nina