Hello everyone! My name is Carmen Lawrence, a project scientist at JASCO Applied Sciences. My primary focus during this cruise is the successful retrieval, refurbishment, and deployment of our acoustic monitoring stations, “landers”, at each of the seven stations.

My name is Brandyn Lucca; if you’ve been following our adventures at sea since 2017, you may recognize my name from the previous trips. But if not, I am a PhD student in Dr. Joseph Warren’s lab at Stony Brook University. I am particularly interested in improving the ways we monitor and count prey—like zooplankton such as myctophids, shrimp, and krill that are consumed by whales, and other predators—by using remote sensing techniques like underwater acoustics.

At 16:07 yesterday, we were leaned over the bow to watch a dozen bottlenose dolphins leap through the waves. They jumped and splashed around as they rode our bow, and I felt as if we were engaged in an interspecies race. We stand watch for marine mammals all day when we’re on station, and these dolphins have certainly been the star of the show. Meanwhile, we’ve been pulling up some other cool animals in unexpected places.

Today is the 4^th day since departure …I believe. Since starting the night’s watch shift (6pm – 6am), it is difficult to tell when one day ends and the next begin. At least I can say I am finally used to the schedule as I’ve now managed to sleep through most of the day!

It is night three of our cruise on the RV Armstrong! As a member of this ship’s night watch, I am writing this dark and early at 3:00 am. Fortunately, it took surprisingly little time to adjust my sleep schedule to the night shift. This is probably a good thing because we have been hard at work the last few nights with zooplankton sampling, tows, and acoustic surveys.