We spent the past day and night completing the second to last site of the ADEON II cruise at Hatteras South, and transiting to our last one, the Virginia Inter-Canyon site. At each of these last three sites, we’re able to take some extra time to do multiple zooplankton tows, and collect more data. This includes getting to move a bit further offshore where the continental shelf drops off more, so that we can send the net even deeper down in the water column. We sent our last deep tow down to more than 1300 meters, and collected some really cool critters! As usual, we caught many interesting-looking deep sea fish, including this big guy:

But had an even bigger – literally – surprise in our net, in the form of a large squid!

We have only a few more tows to do for the ADEON II trip, and we can’t wait to see what we catch next! But while waiting to arrive at the site, and for nighttime to come, we’ve been enjoying watching a pod of common dolphins having fun around the boat, riding our bow, and the waves.