Last night we conducted our first zooplankton net tows of the trip, just off Cape Hatteras. I still get excited by the prospect of what organisms we might catch. Looking over the sides of the ship as we sent out the nets this time, I could already guess one thing we’d be pulling in: sargassum (a type of seaweed).  Sargassum is a macroalgae extremely common to this region of the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, this seaweed was named after it – the Sargasso Sea sits at the center of a circulating current system that forms the North Atlantic Gyre.