Journals 2005/2006

Debra Slade-Redden
New Caney High School, New Caney, Texas

"Platts Bank Survey" R/V Galatea July 10-24, 2005

Journal Index: July 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17        18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24

July 19, 2005
Another day in the lab

The day started out bleak and foggy. By 10:30 the fog burned off and it was a beautiful sunny day. The weather forecast was incorrect, so we were not going out on the boat. Hopefully tomorrow we would have another cruise. We were back at the lab going over the rest of the data.

Moriah was counting and identifying more plankton and this allowed me to watch over her shoulder. She taught me how to identify a male Calanus as opposed to a female Calanus. I also learned how to identify different species of plankton. She had five more samples to complete. The sample I am taking home with me is full of many lab possibilities for my students. Hopefully, I can purchase a plankton net and use it to identify the plankton of the Gulf of Mexico.

Moriah counting plankton.

I spent the day working and helping Moriah. She was extremely knowledgeable and showed me the new things she saw. We had a female Calanus with an egg sac containing a fully developed Calanus ready to hatch. It was a whole new world under the microscope.

Our whole group from the research center held a meeting to discuss our findings. We discovered that we have many readings in the "hot spot" areas and needed to do more readings in all the other areas. We needed to run tests across the bank and in areas where there was no "hot spot". We met in the morning with our entire research team to discuss our meeting.