 Day 4 – A squid's diet
July 16, 2012
The plan for today was to launch the Midwater Respirometry System (MRS) early in the morning, but the system was not responding properly so we could not launch it. While Kim Reisenbichler and the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) pilots were trying to fix it, we adapted our schedule and decided to recover the camera system we launched yesterday afternoon. This was a short dive from 8:45 a.m. until 10:10 a.m. The retrieval went smoothly and the videos recorded overnight will now be analyzed by Henk-Jan Hoving, a postdoctoral fellow in the Midwater Ecology Lab. Here is how Henk-Jan describes his mission on this cruise:
Gonatus squid feeding on a myctophid fish.
The second dive of the day started at 11:05 a.m. We collected different animals including several squid (Taonius and Chiroteuthis calyx). We also collected some Sergestes similis shrimp that will be used by Kim Reisenbichler for respirometry experiments. 
Cockatoo squid. (Taonius)
Kim managed to fix the MRS that was then reconnected to the ROV in the evening. Everything is now ready for tomorrow morning! 
—Geraldine Fauville
|
Logbook
Equipment
 R/V Western FlyerThe R/V Western Flyer is a small water-plane area twin hull (SWATH) oceanographic research vessel measuring 35.6 meters long and 16.2 meters wide. It was designed and constructed for MBARI to serve as the support vessel for ROV operations. Her missions include the Monterey Bay as well as extended cruises to Hawaii, Gulf of California, and the Pacific Northwest.
ROV Doc Ricketts is MBARI's next generation ROV. The system breaks new ground in providing an integrated unmanned submersible research platform, with many powerful features providing efficient, reliable and precise sampling and data collection in a wide range of missions.
The MRS conducts oxygen consumption rate measurements in situ gauging the metabolism of animals without subjecting them to the stresses of transport to the surface. MRS has been modified to operate in deeper water with an expanded capacity, enabling respiration studies on animals that live deeper than 1,250 meters.
Detritus samplers are large plexiglass containers with lids that can be controlled by the pilot of the ROV and gently closed once an organism is trapped inside.
The CTDO is mounted on the ROV and takes in situ measurements of environmental parameters such as conductivity, temperature, depth, and oxygen concentration.
This sampler acts like a vacuum cleaner sucking up samples and depositing them into one of the 12 buckets. Research Team
Bruce Robison's research is focused on the biology and ecology of deep-sea animals, particularly those that inhabit the oceanic water column. He pioneered the use of undersea vehicles for these studies and he led the first team of scientists trained as research submersible pilots. At MBARI, his research group has focused on the development of remotely operated vehicles as platforms for deep-sea science.
Kim's general area of interest is the study of midwater and deep sea animals. He has developed many tools and techniques to observe, manipulate, and collect these organisms, and to maintain the animals in the lab.
Rob is interested in the ecology of midwater invertebrates. He has worked in the Robison lab and been involved with the Midwater Time Series since he came to MBARI in 1996, identifying and quantifying mesopelagic animals and the changes in that community over time, depth and relative to other physical factors. He is looking forward to more sea-time this year than last!
Kris works with the Midwater Ecology group, analyzing ROV video transects between 50 and 1,000 meters in depth to identify biological organisms from all taxonomic levels, most of which spend their entire lives in the oceanic water column. Kris started working at MBARI in 1996 after finishing her Master's at UC Santa Cruz. She's looking forward to returning to sea this month to collect video transects and search for deep-sea lobster larvae from the family Polychelidae.
Susan works in the MBARI video lab, where her primary responsibility is to watch video taken with MBARI's remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and make observations about the organisms, behaviors, equipment, and geological features that she sees. While annotating video, she's become adept at identifying numerous deep-sea organisms, specializing in midwater organisms. She works closely with the midwater ecology group and the bioluminescence lab to expand her knowledge of the fish, jellies, cephalopods, and other groups in the midwater.
Henk-Jan is a postdoc in the Midwater Ecology Group of Bruce Robison, Ph.D., investigating the life history strategies of pelagic cephalopods. Cephalopods have one reproductive cycle after which they die. Henk-Jan is interested in how long deep-sea cephalopods live, and how different species shape their reproductive strategies to optimize their single reproductive event.
After completing her Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley and MBARI, then a postdoc at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Karen received a scientist position at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Her research focuses on the evolution of pelagic invertebrates, primarily polychaete worms and isopod crustaceans.
Bret is an aquarist at Monterey Bay Aquarium where his job is to highlight and display a wide variety of marine organisms by providing the best possible conditions for each individual in captivity. Bret specializes in tropical systems and cephalopods.
Geraldine has a master's degree in marine biology and is currently working toward a master's in education, communication and new technologies at the University of Gothenburg. She is a summer intern with MBARI's ITD division, investigating the potential for outreach and communication that social media holds. |
