charismaticmicrofauna

Today is our 7th day at sea in the East Pacific. We’ve been stationed at the 9 degrees north study site and have launched two Alvin dives. The first evening of Alvin’s dives brought up buckets of giant Riftia tube worms for me to dissect and take samples that are needed to study the metabolic pathways that our research team is trying to decipher. The worms have casings that they excrete which keeps their soft tissues anchored to the hydrothermal vent and it is necessary to remove them from the casing before we dissect them. My mentor showed me a method to remove the stubborn ones. One must cut the casing right below where the worm’s body stops in the tube and blow on it like a trumpet while grasping it’s plume that comes out of the top and pull simultaneously. This, of course, horrified a fellow researcher who is associated with a different institution when she had the misfortune of needing to use a piece of equipment in the 4 degree celsius dissection laboratory. Yesterday, the Alvin was unable to dive due to a gasket problem and was drydocked all day. In the downtime, the chief scientist set up a ping pong table in the main laboratory to pass the time between experiments and incubations. When we pulled out of the Manzanillo harbor we picked up 5 hitchhikers, Boobie birds.  That’s right, Boobies. They’ve been using our home as a home base and have been joined by 2 finches, 3 seagulls, and 1 falcon. Unfortunately, since the falcon appeared the numbers of birds have been decreasing and occasionally feathers rain down on the lower decks that seem to come from the ship’s signalling tower. Last night, after a day of heavy rain at the site,  I watched a feeding frenzy of squid that had come to feast on a school of small flying fish. The flying fish jump high and occasionally land on the deck of the boat in an attempt to escape their fate in the food web. I watched the squid and fish for an hour before going to bed and falling asleep to the rocking of the ship and the sounds of the waves splashing on its starboard wall.