Smooth Seas Don’t Always Equal Smooth Sailing – by Jess P.

The UVP mounted on the rosette (ph. by Isa)

Finally sampling! The time passes so much faster with science in full swing. Or really, I should say nights as I've slowly turned into a night-walker, on shift from midnight to noon. Maybe it was the gentle rocking of the ship over the last few weeks in these unexpectedly calm seas that lulled me into complacency or maybe it was the sleep lost as I didn't want to miss the whales, icebergs, or stunning sunsets that happened outside of my shift hours…but all of a sudden everything seemed to go sideways. I run the Underwater Vision Profiler, UVP for short, which images particles and zooplankton in the water column, keeps track of their size, and stores images for identification. This information is being used to describe how carbon is cycled in the oceans, and gives a glimpse into zooplankton communities without taking the extra time needed to deploy nets and capture them.

The UVP is mounted onto the rosette frame behind the sampling bottles, with mere millimeters to spare. Usually my shift consists of plugging and unplugging cables, downloading data, and sorting images; then there's days where I find myself climbing onto (and almost into) the CTD rosette. As Murphy's Law dictates, anything that can go wrong will…and that's how I was feeling as I looked down onto my instrument, realizing cables had detached while underwater…and that the pieces specially formulated to fit the UVP on this frame were falling apart.

Checking the instrument from the top of the rosette.. while Dani makes sure that everything goes well ;-) (ph. by Isa)

Fortunately, even though the ship is isolated, you're never alone in trying to resolve issues out here. Other scientists, the marine techs, and crew members offer up extra sets of hands and their knowledge whenever possible...it's certainly not the first-time unexpected things like this have happened. Within 24 hours, and with much thanks to the ingenuity of the marine techs Joseph ad Jon, the instrument and new mounting hardware were tested and ready to deploy again. Looks like there's many more days of cable duty and image sorting ahead!

Krill – Characteristic of Antarctic waters, these crustaceans are one of the primary food sources for many whales who swim vast distances to feast upon them. Larvacean – This image shows the remnants from a larvacean 'house', which is a structure the animal builds out of mucus to filter its food out of the water column. Powered by the animal's tail waving, water is sucked into the house and pushed through the maze of mucus, allowing for particularly tasty food to be captured and engulphed. There is lots of particulate matter in the ocean the larvacean doesn't want to eat, so these houses get clogged with unwanted things after a time and are then left behind or discarded so the larvacean can build a new, clean one. Jellyfish 1 & 2 – Gelantinous zooplankton like these jellyfish often get broken up by nets, so other methods such as imaging are useful to see these creatures in their native state.