Journals 2009/2010

David Wehunt
Soddy Daisy High School, Soddy Daisy, TN

"Atlantic Northeast Shelf Ecosystem Monitoring Project" R/V Delaware II August 16 - August 29, 2009

Journal Index: August 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22            23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29

August 26, 2009
Eastern Edge of George's Bank, Canada

Latitude: N 42° 02' 97"
Longitude: W 065° 44' 77"

The day began still shrouded in fog. The fog is interesting in that if forms a halo around the ship. See pictures below. The night shift had an interesting night. The bongos still collected arthropods but they also collected krill. They also saw on their watch dolphins, a school of fish so thick they said you could walk on them and a hammerhead shark, possibly 10 feet long.

Fog off the bow		Fog off port

Our shift worked 4 stations by noon and that is when the fog moved off and stayed away. During the afternoon, waiting for the next station, we watched dolphins surfing the bow waves of the ship.

Dolphins bow surfing		Dolphins jumping in bow wave

The final station on my watch took one hour and twenty minutes to complete. We were in 220 meter deep waters and we did the following. We took a bottom water sample and then sent a Grab down for research Alison is doing on krill; released the drift buoy my students will be monitoring; and did a bongo the took over 500 meters of cable to get the bongo down to 5 meters above the bottom.

A bottom grab collects soil off the ocean floor by working like a trap. The jaws of the grab are opened and when it his bottom the jaws close taking a bite out of the sediment on the bottom.

Bottom Grab

The drift buoy we deployed will ride the currents sending information to a web site, which I will identify in a future journal, about water temperature. We hope it will find its way out into the Atlantic Ocean and we will monitor the buoy for the next 400 plus days keeping track of its location and data.

Wehunt and Jerry preparing to deploy drift buoy