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I started my day by standing on the deck, watching the ocean. This morning we were somewhere off the coast of South Carolina. Following that we listened to a crew member, Zoe, talk about how she ended up on the Endeavor. She began as a lobster fisherman and transitioned to research vessels to further her career on ships. Soon after this we learned that Oscar, another crew member, found two flying fish that had ended up on the deck. Flying fish can propel themselves more than 35 miles an hour. Then, they use their “wings” (shown in the photo) to glide around 650 ft at a time. The most interesting part of the flying fish for me was moving their “wings”. These pectoral fins were bony and connected with a shiny membrane. We decided that we were going to dissect them and look at them under our microscopes. Marshall, one of our marine techs, showed us how to dissect the fish through the brain and find their otolith. The Otolith is the ear bone and can be used to determine the age of the fish by counting the rings on it. We also looked at different parts of the fish under our microscopes. We made slides for the optic nerve, fins, heart. and blood of the fish.
Later in the day, Bea, our other marine tech, showed us how to do a night tow and found lots phytoplankton and salp to look at under a microscope. We found an abundance of this phytoplankton at night because this is the time they come to the surface. It was interesting to see the difference in phytoplankton towing during the day versus the night. During the day we only found a couple organisms to look at, but in the night our jar was full of phytoplankton. We also found a small jellyfish! We finished our night by looking at a beautiful sunset.
-Lily Kratz
