We have begun our trip back up the coast towards Woods Hole, MA! During the night shift tonight, we caught two huge catches of animals including enormous copepods, a plethora of myctophids and Gonostomatidae, and some large (although not giant) squids. The deeper of our two tows brought up some elusive animals from the deep sea including a gulper eel and a dragonfish with a bioluminescent lure. During our first net tow of the night we sampled all the way down to 1,569 meters depth, making that tow one of the deepest not only on this cruise, but on all of the ADEON cruises ever!
However, now that all of the stations have been sampled at least once, the science crew has found that we have a little more time than usual on our hands. Our solution? To set up a series of complex scavenger hunts for the other shifts to solve! On November 1st the day shift, lead by the puzzle master Emmanuelle Cook, set up a series of puzzles for the night watch that started with us finding a cypher in Stephen King’s It, involved clues guarded by the watchful eye of Lego Neil Armstrong, and culminated in us finding a treasure trove of candy in the printer. To return the favor and give them a chance to have just as much fun as we did, the night watch has used our free time during the last couple of shifts to make a puzzle for them as well. With our combined brain power and some guidance from the puzzle master, we can only hope we did as good a job as them. Good luck, day crew!
Cassidy Bell (Undergraduate at Stony Brook University)
