NOAA R/V Gloria Michelle, Caught on Film!

Film crew from the BBC shooting footage on board the Gloria Michele

On May 5th the crew and scientific party were visited by a film crew from the BBC program Horizon.   The film crew consisted of the Producer (Peter Oxley), a sound technician, a camera man, and a second camera operator who was on a small lobster boat.

NOAA Corps officers Chris Briand and Carl Rhodes aboard the Gloria Michelle at the time of the filming.

The smaller vessel tailed the Gloria Michelle and took footage from that vantage point during several trawls while the camera crew and the producer set up shots on board.  The BBC film crew was invited on board by the scientific party from the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries.   A 7 minute segment about surveying the ocean will be aired sometime in October on the BBC.

Examining the Catch

Crew hooks up CTD probe to bongo nets. While underwater, the probe sends information to a computer which allows researchers to track the data in real time.

The front that passed over the coast last night got to us early this morning, but fortunately the winds never blew hard, and the seas stayed reasonably calm.  As the day wore on, the sun even came out to warm us up. We were busy doing stations all day.  The night watch got us down off the northeast tip of Long Island, and we have been working our offshore track down the edge of the shelf-break.  The Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth probe has been working all day, sending data back to the computer in the dry lab.

The plankton collections have been fairly large, and some tows have caught a small number of ctenophores (gelatinous filter feeders).  In the sieve, they look like clear grapes.  If they become very abundant they can quickly clog your net.  We are more interested in the smaller plankton, most of which is too small to distinguish with the naked eye.

Close view of a seive with plankton and ctenophores.

However, there are some exceptions, like the large Amphipods that crawl around in the sieve as soon as you wash them in from the net.  We also collected some “larger” larval fish.  Some of our tows today had yellowtail flounder larvae, and their broad bodies make them easy to pick out of the sample.  The silvery colored hake larvae are also easy targets.

Flounder and hake larvae

The night watch comes on soon.  They’ll keep us on our southward track, and hopefully continue with the good catches.

Let the Ecosystem Monitoring Begin

The NOAA Ship Delaware II left Woods Hole, MA, this morning for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s spring Ecosystem Monitoring (EcoMon) cruise.  The EcoMon cruises sample ichthyoplankton and zooplankton from four geographic regions from Cape Hatteras, NC, to Nova Scotia.

Map of planned cruise track: Mid-Atlantic Bight (cyan), Southern New England (green), Georges Bank (magenta), and the Gulf of Maine (red).

The information we gather from this cruise helps us analyze and keep track of seasonal and inter-annual patterns of the ichthyoplankton and zooplankton in the northeast continental shelf Large Marine Ecosystem. We look at the amount of plankton, where it’s located, and what different types are generally found. Researchers from NASA and Old Dominion University are also on board collecting data for the Climate Variability on the East Coast (CLiVEC) program. Plus, there are two observers here to survey birds and marine mammals, as well as scientists collecting zooplankton samples for the Census of Marine Zooplankton project.

NOAA ship Delaware II out at sea

The first day of the cruise is usually the most hectic, especially when you have 12 scientists coming from around the country.  Thankfully, everyone made it to the dock for our 9-am sailing.  The next step was the first station, which is about 3 hours out of port, off the coast Massachusetts.

A bongo net, used to capture plankton, is recovered aboard the Delaware II. (Photo by Jerry Prezioso/NOAA)

We’ll sample at 125 stations, and our methods for collecting data are mostly the same at each place.  The scientists and the crew are just starting to get into the rhythm of the routine.  We are putting our gear overboard for the first time, and nowadays much of that gear has some electronic component.  Our bongo nets have a real-time Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth (CTD) probe mounted above them.  This allows us to collect environmental data from the water column while sampling, and it keeps our nets off the bottom of the oceanfloor.  Still, you have to expect the unexpected because sometimes electronics and seawater don’t mix. The CTD stopped sending data back to our computer screen about half way through the first tow.  Fortunately we have a spare, and only lost a little time to swap out the malfunctioning instrument.  We haven’t had time to diagnose the problem yet.  In the meantime, we’ve got 124 more stations to sample.

Endangered Species Day 2010

"Reflection" shows her calf how to lobtail. Photo by Allison Glass/NOAA.

In honor of the fifth annual Endangered Species Day (as unanimously declared by the US Senate), we’d like to help raise awareness with links to some of these inspired stories around the web.

Our very own National Marine Fisheries Service has video footage of sea turtles, right whales (taken by our own Allison Glass), monk seals, and more!  Also, endangered species success stories!

National Geographic has featured some events happening across the United States as well as cool video footage of endangered animals.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service also has a video, as well as a quiz and other information.

May 17th, Our Best Day Yet!!

If you’d asked me last night if yesterday could be topped, I would have said, “no way.” We worked around forty right whales and got three biopsy samples. At the end of the day, I would stand corrected.

Tagging crew aboard Boo Radley. Photo by Allison Glass/NOAA.

We were on watch by 0600 and launched the little gray boat and Boo Radley from the back deck of the Delaware II(DEII) by 0730hrs.  We’d returned to the same area that we were working yesterday, near the “BC” buoy just east of Chatham, MA. From the flybridge of the ship, we could see the water towers and make out houses on the beach.  So, ahem, being near the “BC” buoy means, “in the middle of the shipping lanes.” Uugh. During our few days with whales in this area, the ships coming through seemed to be complying with the 10kts. speed restriction.

Calf of right whale #2460. Photo by Beth Josephson/NOAA.

The seas were a bit choppy in the morning, making it sort of difficult to work whales. But by lunch time, we’d worked about seven right whales. Seas calmed in the afternoon, and we worked another handful of right whales. We decided to do a little survey expedition to the south, east, and north of the concentration of whales. We picked up one outlier to the south. As we headed east, it became clear that there we no whales close in that direction. We headed north, past the concentration, veered westerly, and came back into the area that the DEII was working from the north. We picked up a mother/calf pair that had already been sampled this winter but had not been seen yet in the Great South Channel. Then we picked up our second biopsy target for the day, Eg#1326, first seen in 1983, but never sampled.  As we got closer to the DEII, we had another hour and a half before we needed to get the Little Gray Boat loaded back aboard. We decided to continue a bit south, back into the fray of right and sei whales from that morning.

The elusive right whale Eg#1715 high skim feeding. Photo by Beth Josephson/NOAA.

As we neared the area, it was a sight to behold! The sea was flat calm, and there were right whales high skimming everywhere! They were fairly easy to work, as they fed through a patch of copepods in one direction, showing us one side of their head, and then made a 180° turn, showing us the other without us having to maneuver the boat hardly at all. A photo-ID person’s dream. Curiously, they were all different individual whales from the ones we saw that morning. We worked one, then another, and another, and then as we approached the next, it became clear to us that it was Eg#1715. We danced a little jig on the boat.  We’d seen her one afternoon in really choppy seas but didn’t realize that she needed to be darted, and we’d been kicking ourselves ever since. The crossbow came out, and we sampled the third whale of the day, all three whales known since the 1980s and never before sampled! OK, now THIS was our best day yet!

Adventures on the Atlantic

Clay on watch aboard the Delaware II

Seas were a bit lumpier than we’d hoped the morning of May 13th. We were in the same area that we ended the day before, with a handful of right whales around. We surveyed north, trying to find more of a concentration. Around 1030 hours, we got into an area with about a dozen or so right whales. It’s as far north as we’ve been during the whole cruise. Around position 41 51.5N x 69 28.0W (check the NOAA ship tracker for our location at all times). The seas calmed a bit, and we launched both small boats and got in about six good hours on the water.

In the gray boat, we biopsied another older right whale that had never been sampled!  In their trusty inflatable, BooRadley, Mark and Nadine had a good tag attachment, over three hours! The winds really picked up quickly, and it got snotty fast. Always seems like we are downwind from the ship when this happens and have to slog our way back into the seas. No matter though, it was another great day on the water and all back aboard by 1730hrs.

Beth and Grace doing small boat work.

We were not involved in the right whale disentanglement that day, but could hear a bit of it on the radio. For those of you who don’t know, NOAA’s aerial survey team located an entangled right whale off the coast of Chatham, MA, (about 30nm south of where we were working) and circled there, staying with the whale to assist the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies disentanglement response team in locating it as quickly as possible. The response team, with guidance from our aerial team, was successful in fully disentangling the whale.

Great Strides in Right Whale Research

Grace watches as they launch the little gray boat over the side of the Delaware II.

After 45 hours of tracking the RATS (Realtime Acoustic Tracking System) buoys, we were ready to retrieve them on May 12th. Around 0700hrs, Grace, Allison, Beth and Clay launched in the Little Gray Boat to work right whales in the area, and Nadine, Sarah, and Amalia went off in the inflatable boat, BooRadley, to pick up the RATS buoys.  They accomplished the pick-ups in a few hours, and Mark and Nadine began tagging efforts.

Allison successfully completes her first biopsy sample.

We found another mother/calf pair. The calf of this pair had not been sampled yet. Allison got her first right whale biopsy sample ever! She nailed it on the first try. We’ve now added two more calf samples to the tally from down south this winter.  These samples will contribute to the ongoing genetic research being done by colleagues in Canada. It’s important to sample the calves when they are still with their mothers.

It was a fairly cold gray day in the Atlantic Ocean, and around midday we were hopeful for a hot lunch. We called the ship, and our chef extraordinaire was going to put something together for us. What service– a quick drive by and we have a box of hot lunches…plates of shrimp no less!

Grace, Beth, and Clay pause for a lunch break on the water.

Back to the whale pursuit.  Seas picked up in the afternoon, but workable still. Getting a bit difficult to follow whales up sea … or a little wet,  I should say. Not too rough to recognize an old whale, #1056, who had never been biopsy sampled! This whale has been known to the catalog for thirty years, and no one had ever sampled it… until we did on Wednesday! It was a great day on the water!

Burning the Midnight Oil

41 33.05 N
69 22.87 W
12:30 AM

Rough seas on the Atlantic. Photo credit: Amalia Aruda/NOAA

This is Nadine, writing to you during the night shift.  Although the Delaware II is far from quiet, (there are lots of fans and lights and instruments buzzing), it is peaceful in the usually bustling dry lab because most folks on the ship are sleeping.  Yesterday morning we awoke to the sound of the anchor chain being hauled in, and the Delaware II immediately began pitching and rolling in large waves and high winds.  The wind quieted throughout the day, and by late afternoon the waters were calm.  We were treated to a beautiful sunset and the ocean began to look more like it was made of liquid mercury than seawater.

Sun setting on the ocean, as viewed from the Delaware II. Photo credit: Amalia Aruda/NOAA

We’ve been completing an anchor station over the last 48 hours, although the ship isn’t actually at anchor.  Yesterday morning we set 4 RATS (real-time-acoustic-tracking-system) buoys in a square array.

Mark deploys RATS buoy

Then the captain positioned the Delaware II in the middle of the buoys.  The buoys are recording whale vocalizations and other sources of noise in the water.  Aboard the Delaware II, while keeping in the center of the RATS array, we are collecting data about seawater, zooplankton, and whales.  Lisa, Alison, Beth, and Clay spent the past 2 days up on the flying bridge scanning for and counting whales around the ship.  They deserve a round of applause, because it has been very cold and windy up there!  Mark, Sarah, Amalia, and I took turns operating a small arsenal of oceanographic instruments that are housed in a large metal cage.  Every 30 minutes, we lower the cage to the seafloor, all the while measuring the temperature and salinity of the water, collecting a count of particles in the water column, and photographing zooplankton with an underwater microscope.  The wonderful and capable crew of the Delaware II helped us complete nearly100 casts with our cage at this station!

We have plans to launch Boo early tomorrow morning to pick up the buoys, but first we have a night of instrument casts to complete.

Bringing instrument cage aboard at sunset. Photo credit: Amalia Aruda/NOAA

Successful Day at Sea

WHOI crew sorting copepods. Photo credit: Lisa Conger/NOAA.

On May 5 we steamed back to the area where we had whales the day before. At 0600, winds were a consistent 20kts and a bit too choppy to launch small boats. A couple of us were up on watch to put us in the thick of whales, and Mark (WHOI) fished for copepods. With one cast of the plankton net, they had enough copepods to keep them busy sorting for hours. Mark and Nadine are looking at the different phases of copepod maturity and trying to discern what may trigger them from one phase to another…which means sorting them while alive, photographing each one, and preserving each tiny copepod individually! They have three microscopes and quite the assembly line procedure.

Right whale skim feeding. Our ship, Delaware II, is in the background. Photo credit: Lisa Conger/NOAA.

Around midday, the seas calmed enough to launch our gray boat. We had a spectacular day on the water, photographing over 25 right whales and biopsy sampling two animals that had never been sampled. For every right whale that you try to drive the boat towards, there were two or three sei whales that you had to get around. It’s like getting through one of those crazy Boston intersections with no traffic light…big whales coming from every direction…with mouths big enough to walk into all agape…truly spectacular!

Mark and Nadine launched in Boo a bit later. They were successful in getting a suction-cup tag on a right whale within the hour and it stayed on for almost three hours!  They were able to track their tagged whale using a high frequency sound coming from the tag (that the whale can’t hear) underwater. It’s a good thing, because you would never be able to keep up with one individual visually.

Mark Baumgartner and Nadine Lysiak, of WHOI, out on Boo Radley. Photo credit: Allison Glass/NOAA.

The ship’s crew has been most accommodating and the chief boatswain is staying on watch a bit later in the day so we can make good use of workable weather and daylight. Both small boats and crew were back aboard around 1900hrs, and Rockwell had saved us a spectacular feast.

Thar She Blows!

Four feeding humpbacks. Photo credit: Allison Glass/NOAA.

On Tuesday, May 4^th, we surveyed around the area known to have Northern Atlantic right whales on Saturday. It didn’t take long until we spotted a lot of blows on the horizon. When we got a bit closer, we realized they are all humpbacks. A beautiful sight, but not what we’re looking to find. We continued on and by 0830hrs or so we found what we were looking for…lots of Northern Atlantic right whales.

We launched Mark and Nadine from the Delaware II in their 15’ tagging boat, called Boo Radley, around 0900hrs. They had great success putting a suction cup tag on a right whale within the hour. The rest of the science crew stayed aboard the ship to make sure that all of the technical support for the tagging crew was running smoothly.

Fluke of a mother right whale next to her calf. Photo credit: Beth Josephson/NOAA.

Just after lunch, the rest of us launched in our 18’ boat, named Mesoplodon but for some reason affectionately called ‘little gray boat’ (is that really shorter than Mesoplodon? Anyway…), and headed off to photograph whales and look for potential biopsy sampling targets. Right off the bat we found a mother/calf pair. It was a pair that was not biopsy sampled in the southeastern calving grounds this winter – we sampled the calf and are off to a rockin’ great start to our cruise!

These Northern Atlantic right whales are mixed in with A LOT of sei whales. They are all feeding on copepods and they are mostly all feeding at the surface. We are in a leviathan’s café for sure. Whales are swimming everywhere with their mouths wide open. Even though the water is rich with zooplankton, the visibility is incredible and every few minutes there is a whale swimming by with mouth agape and that view is spectacular!