Blog posted for Jeff Plumlee:

Howdy from the Blazing Seven!

Day three turned out to be another beautiful day to be a scientist on the Blazing Seven. Flat seas, blue water, and warm sun have been a constant this trip, to our enjoyment. We began our day after making the trip from N 27 to N 28 and arriving at station 25 at 0600. Sargassum was yet again present in every tow save the last two and brought a bounty of fishes. It was the most we had seen yet, but with some new faces, including tripletail (Lobotidae) and Bermuda chub (Kyphosidae). We continued to find billfish larvae as well as flying-fish larvae. Our last two sites had an amazing amount of diverse larvae from families like Bothidae, Carangidae, and Synodontidae. We are hoping this exciting trend continues!

One of the important, sometimes overlooked, aspects of any expedition is the hard work of the field researchers that help to collect the enormous amount of specimens and data. Today's post is about recognizing the folks out here keeping the wheels turning.

PhD Student Larissa Kitchens
Graduate Technician Carlos Ruiz
Undergraduate Technician Chris Steffen
Undergraduate Technician Josh Bowling
Undergraduate Volunteer Jason Williams

Without these students and technicians putting forth their best efforts and working together as a team, these projects would run far less smoothly.

Tomorrow we hit the last leg of our journey, Stations 37-48, followed by our trip back to Port Fourchon. It's been fantastic so far but there is still a good deal of sampling left to do, so stay tuned!

Jeff

Blog post from Jeff Plumlee on the Blazing Seven:

Howdy from the Blazing Seven!

We have had an incredibly productive day! This morning we woke up at 0300 as we arrived on our first site at N 27 W 91. Shortly after, we completed our first 500m mid-water tow with a ring net. In the tow we collected several deepwater species including, lanternfish (Myctophidae), deepwater shrimp, and various fish larvae. After the 500m tow we rested and prepared till 0600 to start our first site for neuston and 100-m bongo nets tows looking for billfish and tuna larvae. The most abundant feature of today was Sargassum, and there was plenty of it, a pattern we are very familiar with in Galveston, Texas. However even with the Sargassum we were able to find plenty of jacks (Carangidae), f ilefish (Monacanthidae), and a good number of flyingfish larvae, among other pelagic species. Despite the potential setbacks Sargassum can cause, we were able to complete 12 sites from N 27 W 91 to N 27 W 89.5 which, according to Captain Thomas, is a TAMUG Billfish cruise record for site sampling productivity, WHOOP! 

In addition to towing nets, we also filtered water at several select stations to help aid fellow researchers at TAMUG. Dr. David Wells of Texas A&M at Galveston, and his soon-to-be PhD student, Travis Richards, are focusing their efforts as apart of the DEEPEND Consortium on pelagic organisms and their trophic connectivity. One way that this can be accomplished is through stable isotope analysis. Looking at the ratio of heavy isotopes (Carbon 13 and Nitrogen 15) can help researchers understand the contributions to an organisms' diet. Specifically, contributions from primary production (using Carbon 13), and trophic position (using Nitrogen 15). Gathering the contributors of the base of the trophic web as well as the estimates of their associated locations and oceanographic features is crucial to applying effective models to the system. That's where we come in. Filtering water and analyzing the phytoplankton collected in the filter, along with collecting vegetation from the site (like Sargassum) is an easy way to create these regional maps and is crucial to understand food web dynamics.

Tonight we will complete our second 500-m mid-water tow, and tomorrow we hope to finish our N 27 transect as well as a third 500-m mid-water tow. We are continuing to run into new and dynamic oceanographic features, so stay tuned for updates!

Jeff

Greetings from the R/V Blazing Seven! I'm your current teacher at sea from Sarasota, FL.  I'm very excited to be joining scientists and students from Texas A&M Galveston and Nova Southeastern University to sample the larvae and juveniles of pelagic fishes using plankton nets.  You can read more about the research done by Jay Rooker, PhD here. 

We left Port Fourchon, LA early this morning and just made it to our first sampling site to collect plankton.  Plankton are tiny (usually) plants or animals that drift with the currents.  The focus of this cruise is animal plankton, referred to as zooplankton. The basic design of a plankton net is a large area of mesh that ends in a collection bucket. The two nets we will be using during this cruise will sample at different depths and have different mesh sizes. 

The first net, rightfully named a bongo net, is deployed from the stern. The reason it has two nets is that one net has a mesh size of 333 microns and the other has a mesh size of 500 microns allowing us to sample two different sizes of zooplankton. The bongo net is hoisted off the back of the boat using a winch.  After entering the water it sinks down to a depth of 100 meters (328 feet)! When the nets are brought back up to the surface they are carefully rinsed with seawater to ensure that all of the organisms make it into the collection buckets at the bottom.

The second, a neuston net, is deployed from the side of the ship and samples at the water's surface. 

Each sample from the plankton nets contain algae and a wide variety of of organisms from copepods to larval tuna. The samples are placed in a freezer for identification at a later date. We collected a larval tuna and a sargassum fish! 

In addition to targeting larval and juvenile pelagic fishes, we are collecting samples for other labs involved with the DEEPEND Consortium for their research as well. I’ll get into that more later.  Our next stop is coming up soon! 

Blog posted for Jeff Plumlee:

Howdy from the Blazing Seven!

Today was another rousing success with an early 500-m midwater trawl at 04:00 followed by our 13^th station at N 27 W 89 36' at 06:00. Our midwater trawl consisted of shrimp, squid, jellyfish, and of course, lanternfishes (Myctophidae). It was another beautiful day with clear blue water, a gentle breeze, and 1 - 2 foot seas. We progressed through twelve stations today and continued to have Sargassum at every one. However, with Sargassum, comes abundant diversity, including filefishes (Monacanthidae), triggerfishes (Balistidae), Sargassum fish (Antennariidae), flyingfishes (Exocoetidae), dolphifishes (Coryphaenidae) and others, along with shrimp and crabs. We also found several billfish and flyingfish larvae as well in our neuston and bongo nets.

  juvenile flying fish 

One of our primary objectives on this cruise is to collect ichthyoplankton, primarily billfishes of the families Istiophoridae and Xiphiidae, tunas of the family Scombridae, dolphinfishes (Coryphaenidae) and flyingfishes (Exocoetidae). Dr. Jay Rooker from Texas A&M University at Galveston and many of his students utilize larvae and samples collected from these trips to create a better understanding of these pelagic fishes. Through the utilization of techniques such as otolith chemistry and genetics, along with the collection of oceanographic parameters, researchers can understand in detail the life history of these fishes as well as habitat preference, spawning locations, and population structure. Continued quantitative sampling using multiple gear types, with replicated sampling, allows detailed analysis over seasons and years, revealing long-term trends which are crucial to understanding pelagic ecosystem patterns.

Tonight we are making the trip from N 27 to N28 to begin our second leg of the trip, the westward transect back towards Port Fourchon. We have finished our last midwater trawl so sampling begins tomorrow at 06:00 with neuston and bongo net tows, so stay tuned for more updates!

Jeff