Howdy DEEPENDers!

We have just complete our first day of sampling on the LF2016B Cruise aboard the Blazing Seven. Our crew consists of 9 researchers including: Dr. David Wells, Dr. John Mohan, Cori Meinert, Mike Lewis, Chris Steffen, Jessica Lee, and Jillian Gilmartin from Texas A&M University at Galveston and Sebastian Velez from Florida Atlantic University. We sampled at 14 stations today and had some interesting finds including billfish, swordfish, and a puffer.

We will be towing the ring net again tonight, so look forward to pictures from the deep!

Due to mechanical problems with the ship, the cruise unfortunately had to end early. We docked at Port Fourchon around 2:30am today.

However, the good news is that the next ichthyoplankton cruise will be at the end of July!

All nine of us have a specific task once the boat stops at a station. Travis and Jeff collect water samples to bring back to TAMUG; the water samples are filtered in order to characterize the food web in the Gulf. We also gather environmental data, such as salinity and temperature at each station.

Travis and Jeff collecting water samples

The bongo net and neuston net sampling methods are very similar. They only differ in mesh sizes—this allows us to catch different species along with fish of different sizes. Once the nets are brought on board, we thoroughly rinse all the fish to the bottom of the codends. Then the codends are emptied into a bucket, filtered through a net, placed in their station’s designated jar and preserved. The fish are identified back in Dr. Rooker’s lab at TAMUG.

Retrieving the bongo nets	Rinsing the net

Emptying the codend	Jarring the sample

If the fish is in good condition, it is brought to the dry lab and Kim takes a picture of it. Like this ribbonfish...

We were up early today so we could get our nets in at sunrise! It was 5:54am when we deployed the bongo nets. So far this morning, we completed 3 stations! We’ve been catching a variety of fish in our samples! Here’s a few pictures to show you guys what we are seeing:

barracuda	damselfish	swallower

Antenna codlet	lanternfish