July 9, 2009

7-9-09

The end of the cruise is drawing nearer and it is now starting to sink in. We have finished our last east-west cruise line and are heading south back to Dutch Harbor. Tracy alerted us that this was the penultimate (or next to last) bongo tow. Since we had some poor luck the last two nights I was hopeful that we could bring in a nice haul tonight and tomorrow. We had a bad omen as we looked out into the water, before the bongo nets were deployed, and saw numerous jellyfish drifting about. Considering that we had some decent catches of krill when there were jellyfish in the nets, it wasn’t a sign of complete despair. When the nets came back we had the usual tenticles wrapped around the net line, as was customary when many jellies were in the water. However this time we had a whole jellyfish hanging from the line is the nets were pulled up, something we had not seen before. It made pulling the nets aboard especially tricky so not to get stung in the face by all of the dangling tentacles.

Carrying the nets to the cooler we could feel the gelatinous material collect at the bottom of the nets. Unfortunately, our low expectations were validated. When everything was dumped into the cooler, all you could see was a mass of jellyfish squished together. As we tossed them all back we counted 22 total jellyfish, including the individual wrapped around the line. Certainly a record for most jellyfish caught in the bongo nets at one station. And at the bottom of the cooler, zero krill. We had only one more night to get a good final sampling before calling it quits. At this point we had plenty of nice krill catches, but you always like to finish on a high note.

We noticed in one of Dave Shull’s sediment cores from the previous day, there was a soft coral sitting on top of the sediment. Dave said that no one had noticed it at first when collecting the cores. He could understand why, since the core was collected at 3 AM, much earlier than their normal collection time of 8 or 9 AM. The coral looked like something covered in snow from a Dr. Seuss book. I learned from my sister that Dr. Seuss received much of his inspiration for peculiar vegetation from the Yucca Trees of Joshua Tree National Park. She showed our family pictures she had taken of the Joshua Trees in winter, and there was definitely a slight resemblance to the coral.

It’s interesting to think about nature repeating itself in vastly different environments. Some scientists have theorized that life began at the bottom of the ocean as organisms getting their energy from chemicals spewed out of deep sea hydrothermal vents. With that in mind it is likely that something resembling the soft coral came along well before the Joshua Trees. One can only imagine what types of organisms will come in the distant future that might resemble the coral and Joshua Tree. What ever it is, after watching “The Matrix” again last night for the 25th time, I just hope it isn’t a machine based life form.

-Eli