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Hi, my name is Alex Portwood and I am from Sheldon, Illinois. I attend Lincoln Land Community College in Springfield, Illinois. Today, Monday the 16th we started the morning by learning about plate boundaries and the connections throughout the oceans and continents. We learned that there are converging plates, diverging plates, and transform plate boundaries. We also picked planktic and benthic foraminifera from samples of core 1 onto microfossil slides. We did this so we could easily pick out particular species of foraminifera for stable isotope analysis, without having to search the entire sample. Something I learned today was the fact that you can never have or do enough tests, especially on sediment samples. This has been the third or fourth time we have put core 1 away and then got it back out to take more samples. Along with that, I learned that samples can be a tad different depending on the area you are testing even if it is only centimeters apart. Today marks one week on the R/V Oceanus and it seems like it has flown by. Mainly because we have been so busy taking samples and learning new things. Today was a perfect day, the air temperature was 24 degrees Celsius or 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Something that was fascinating to see was a booby bird that was flying closely above the water waiting for the flying fish to come out of the water. Once the bird saw the fish it would dive into the water attempting to catch the fish. It may very well be the most entertained I have been by a bird ever. It was the first bird we have seen in a couple of days so it added some excitement. Even more exciting than the bird was right at about dusk the captain said there was a fish on the line. So everyone went to the stern of the ship where a crewman pulled the line in. Eventually finding out that somehow the entire bottom of the blue marlin had been stripped off. The captain believed it must have been being pulled behind the boat for an extended period of time and the speed of the boat shredded the fish. It is hard to believe that our STEMSEAS expedition is coming to an end. I’ve got to make sure to get the most out of the time I have left on the research ship.
A flying fish that landed on the deck this morning.
