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By Olivia Stortz
Early this morning, we arrived at our first station at 7:30 am. Although it was much later than our 5:30 am breakfast time, which I had elected to wake up for this morning (Chef Jeff is amazing). The first station was located at the opening of the Chesapeake Bay, while most of us continued with the routine samplings from yesterday. However, three of us had the opportunity to help set up some zooplankton tows and conduct experiments. This started with needing to adjust the zooplankton net and connect two zooplankton filters (64 micron) to two of the Niskin Rosette bottles. We then set up the experiments and set them in holding pools on the back deck of the boat! One is a dilution experiment, one is a predator-prey experiment, and one is an experiment testing the primary production of the plankton collected in the rosette.
After that, we boated along to our next station, which was just one of our typical stations that we have all gotten so used to by now. During this station, we saw a small pod of dolphins, nothing compared to what we saw last night, and a ctenophore (comb jelly) in the sediment “grab” sample that our graduate student mentor, Sam, is collecting for her Foraminifera samples. We quickly subsampled, filtered, pipetted, and more to get to some lunch by Jeff in the Galley. After lunch, we had a four-hour transit time to the next station, which allowed many students to take a much-needed nap after our early morning or catch up on schoolwork that they had been missing out on due to our exciting week so far. During the four-hour transit, we also hear from crew members Christian and Alex to better hear about their journey to the positions that they are in their careers working on marine research vessels.
At the next station, we went back to the chaos of including zooplankton sampling and experiments in our data collection. This went smoothly, and by the time we were done, it was time for a delicious turkey dinner (again… thanks to Chef Jeff). After dinner, we were hitting one final station, just to squeeze one in before the sun sets. This, again, was one of the shorter sights, so many of the students did not need to work on obtaining samples. So many who stayed up last night finishing samples had the opportunity to relax before watching a beautiful Chesapeake Bay Sunset before turning in for the night.
Happy Sailing!
