Q.: What do you do about safety out on the boat?

A.: Before the Pelican even leaves the dock, one of the crew persons has a meeting to tell the scientists all the rules. Safety is very important, and the crew of the Pelican take it very seriously. We are working with heavy equipment that is suspended from cables, and they can swing around or drop suddenly. In rough weather, the deck of the Pelican tilts like a funhouse and can be very slippery. No one ever goes out on deck without letting someone else know, especially at night. When we are working with equipment, everyone on deck must wear a life jacket, a hard hat, and closed-toed shoes (with steel-toed shoes, preferably). In really rough weather, most of the science shuts down, and anyone on deck would wear a safety harness. Luckily, the weather has not been that bad this cruise. Everyone looks out for each other, and the engineer on duty makes sure everyone is being safe.

Q.: Where do you get your food and where do you sleep?
( - Zac from Belcher Elementary, Pinellas, Florida)

A.: Zac,

On the boat, we all have bedrooms (which we call staterooms). The Pelican has three main levels (or "decks"). The captains and chief scientists sleep on the "upper deck", most of the living and working occurs on the "Main deck", and the rest of the crew and scientists sleep on the "Lower Deck". The lower deck tends to be a little noisier, and the upper deck moves a lot more if the ship is rolling, so it's a tradeoff.

We eat our food in the "Galley" on the main deck. There is a full-time cook who is part of the ship's crew. His name is Randy, and he is an amazing cook. We eat very well. There is a huge refrigerator and freezer on the main deck, and there is also a small "ice-cream" freezer that we can raid if we need a snack.

I'm going to post a link to diagrams of the ship's different decks in this blog, and I'll try to get them posted on the main webpage as well:

http://www.stpt.usf.edu/coas/espg/magmix/home.asp
http://www.lumcon.edu/pelican/Specifications/

Q.: Curious to know if you have found any other creatures in the sediments (worms, for example). If no creatures have been found, is that fairly representative of bottom conditions (or what you expected)? and is that linked to a lack of oxygen? Are there some organisms that thrive in low oxygen environments?

Also, do you have any idea how far along the hypoxia cycle is at the moment? Have you timed the cruise to beat the hypoxia? To beat the blooms? (are there blooms?)
( - Marcia)

A.: Marcia,

We don't capture many organisms in the sediment samples, but we usually do get a few worms. The most common type are tube worms, which have a flexible outer covering that they live inside. Tonight we caught a little red wiggly worm, but did not get a picture. None of us have much expertise in identifying these benthic (bottom dwelling) organisms, so we'll have to take some time to check them out when we get back home.

Right now, the oxygen concentrations are still pretty reasonable, so we are not very far into the hypoxia cycle. However, the surface water has a much lower salinity than the deep water all along the shelf, so we anticipate that there will be a strong hypoxia event this summer. Unless something breaks up this stratification (like a very large storm) the bottom water oxygen concentrations should start decreasing as the water temperature increases.

There's not too much going on with algal blooms as far as we can tell. We had one station where the bottom water had a pretty high concentration of phytoplankton, but it seemed to be confined to a limited area.

This cruise was timed to coincide with the high flow period of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, and we managed to hit it pretty squarely. Our next cruise will be in November, 2008, during low flow, and our final cruise will be in July, 2009, to coincide with the most-likely time period for hypoxia.

Thanks for the great questions!
-Dr. Krest

Q.: Cool photos, Alanna! Sounds like you folks have had some pretty full days. Are you finding any surprises (other than the crab) in your water and sediment data collections?
( - Melanie)

A.: Melanie,

Thanks for all your great comments! Not many exciting creatures in the grab sampler. However, a little bird flew on board today when we were taking water samples. It seemed utterly exhausted, and actually allowed one of the scientists (Jade) to pick it up. We tried to give it a little water and a quiet place to rest out of the way. I'll try to get Alanna to post a picture tomorrow when we have some free time.

Q.: Hi Jim. The video of the storm looks pretty harrowing! Is it possible for people to wear a tether line when working at the rail during rough conditions? An accidental slip over the slide looks potentially unpleasant.
( - Tom W.)

A.: Tom, Thanks for the question about safety. Please be assured that we take safety very seriously. In the box core video, it might not be obvious, but there is a safety chain stretch across the very back of the deck, and in this case, the boat is not rocking much at all - Leslie just got unlucky when a wave smacked the back of the ship just right. For more information about safety onboard, please see our earlier post.
-Jim Krest

Q.: Hey This looks so cool with the ponar sampling that you are doing. How deep's the water, how many samples are you taking? How large a sample do you need? Good luck.
( - Tom Krest, Jim's older brother)

A.: Hi Tom! It's great to hear from you.

(I'm really not used to having email while out at sea, so it's nice to be able to chat with family. In the past, I've often gone 6 weeks on research trips with little to no communication, so this is pretty cool!)

To answer your questions, we've been staying in relatively shallow water. Our deepest station was in about 100 meters of water (a little over 300 feet). This is the edge of the continental shelf, and the water depths drop off very quickly if we go past this depth, as deep as 1000 meters or more in some of the underwater canyons.

So far, we have over 100 water samples, 4 box cores and 10 sediment grab samples with the ponar.

For the water samples, we take anywhere from 20 liters (5 gallons) to 440 liters (~110 gallons), and we process them on board so that we don't have to bring the water back (for more detail, check out our main website: http://www.stpt.usf.edu/coas/espg/magmix/home.asp )

Say Hi to Janet and the kids!
-Jim Krest

If you have a question, please email:   Dr. James Krest @ email me