Hello, this is Andrew Heaney again; I last posted on this blog on June 7th. Quite a lot has happened since then; I have been working on both the day and night shifts, from 4 am to 4 pm. I can’t complain about the work itself nor the schedule. In the night shift, when Joe and the other night shift people deploy their nets, I help with writing down information on a clipboard and basically help everyone in the lab. The most interesting things we see, however, in my personal opinion at least, are the awesome little deep sea critters we catch in the nets!

There are two photos below with two different net catches, and both are labeled. One is from my first day on the night shift, where in this net there is a lot of deep sea shrimp, krill, and other invertebrates such as pieces of Siphonophores and crab larvae. The second, more interesting photo is of a large fish approximately the length of my hand that was caught in the nets on a different day. According to my very knowledgeable roommate Sebastian, it’s called a “bristlemouth.”

Unfortunately, in regards to me seeing Marine Mammals, I have been falling behind the other members of the cruise. Apparently two species of dolphin have been sighted by other people on the boat (Bottlenose and Rough-toothed), and I was not able to see either of them. Hopefully at the next few sites I’ll have more luck in that department. I cannot wait to see how the rest of the rest of this cruise turns out!