June 18, 2009

6-18-09

"The sea -- this truth must be confessed -- has no generosity."

-Joseph Conrad

After waking up and watching another glorious sunset, I ventured into the library to check the computer (caught up a bit on world events, morned another Lakers championship). Two of the crew members were talking about U.S-Russian counterintelligence. One of them, Robbie Laird, described submarine warfare between the two countries and the various tactical maneuvers U-boats would make to follow and evade each other. In order to follow another submarine and remain undetected in its radar shadow, the stalker had to be within several hundred feet while keeping the exact same course of travel. In order to spot a trailing sub, the leader would have to make very sharp sudden turns to coax the follower from its path. Seeing as how the Bering Sea separates the two countries, I was thankful to be cruising in the 21st century and not the 1980s.

With this new appreciation for sub warfare tactics we geared up for another krill tow. We had hoped to have passed the majority of the jellyfish two nights ago, but Tracy checked just to be sure. After she looked at the water she said "Oh, there are lots of jellyfish out there again."
"Really" I asked.
"Yes, I wouldn't joke about something like that."

When the nets came up Rachel made an 'optimistic' guess that we would only catch five jellyfish. We didn't see any jellies right off, but we could see that the nets were loaded with algae. So much so, that we couldn't see two inches through the water when we emptied the cod ends into the cooler. Amazingly, Tracy and Megan were still able to scoop out 20 to 25 krill with almost no visibility. A fantastic feat, but not quite enough for us to remove any eyes (the collected individuals were needed for other analyses). Tracy noticed one krill that was swollen do to a parasite. She was excited to send it on to a colleague who devotes a large amount of his research to characterizing krill parasites all over the world. When the jellyfish were thrown overboard we counted exactly five. Rachel seems to have developed a sixth sense for the bongo net tows.


The previous day we had enough krill so that I could cut thirteen sets of eyes from the krill for analysis. I had practiced this enucleation surgery back at the lab (Chesapeake Biological Laboratory) on stable ground so that I could get the hang of the process. I was warned by my advisor, Rodger, that this would be more difficult on a moving boat. I didn't doubt him, but I also didn't realize how much more difficult it would be. In my clumsiness I bumped over a vial containing the krill eyes. Rachel assured me that they still should be salvageable after I scooped them up off the lab bench. I hope her keen instincts are correct again.

Fast forwarding back to today, from one of the upper decks, I watched some of the other scientists take sediment cores. Later in the cruise I will be working with the sediment group to collect a few cores for myself, so I thought it would be good to watch the collection procedure. When the multicorer returned to the surface I could see the sediment at the bottom of each of the tubes. I remembered another one of Robbie's stories about a 'secret' U.S. military attempt to recover a sunken Soviet sub in the middle of the Atlantic. During the recovery process several nuclear torpedoes fell from the torpedo shoot. While it is unlikely that we would core a torpedo on the continental shelf of the Bering Sea, the thought sent a shiver up my spine. As I walked back into the lab I passed Robbie sitting at a computer monitoring the ship's travel. "Any subs tailing us" I asked.
"None at the moment." Robbie chuckled. "But I'll let you know."

-Eli