15 November, 1996

The highlight of my day today was that I got to go FISHING! I was planning on just doing some microscope work but then I ran into Juan, who is in charge of the fish huts and he asked if I wanted to come along to see how they fish, so I jumped at the chance along with one other guy in our group, Anthony. There were 5 of us total and it was great! The hole they make is about 5 ft. in diameter and then they set a good size hut over the top so it is pretty comfortable in there, not cold at all. We got to do a little fishing of our own with kiddie rods--Snoopy and Mickey Mouse! I caught 3 little fish but all together we caught almost 20! But the main event was pulling up the set cable with a winch--the cable is sent all the way to the bottom of the ocean which is around 500 meters deep at this point and set with bait at about 12 different depths along the way. They fish they catch on these lines are called Antarctic Cod in laymans terms. There were 4 of these huge fish on the line and we got to help catch them, weigh them, measure their length, take scale samples, tag them and then release them back in the water. The biggest one weighed 106 pounds but I guess the record is 200 pounds! That is a big fish! It was neat to get the chance to go out with another science group. On the way back we stopped at the Old Aquarium and got to see all the neat things they have in tanks there.

More adventures to come I'm sure!

Jessica