Beasties from the Black

Now one thing that’s great about being part of a multi-disciplinary research cruise with a large number of scientists and their wide ranging studies is that you sometimes get to indulge in your own interests. By way of example during the 3 NAAMES cruises so far I have been able to insinuate myself into some of the work that the Peter Gaube’s Gaube lab (HTTP://gaubelab.org APL-UW) have been doing onboard. Along with their extensive Eddy feature surveys that include the deployment of Echosounders, ADCP’s and Ctd’s, they also deploy a large sampling Net Trawl. This net gets deployed down to depths of 400-500m and targets layers of migrating organisms and their predators. Over the last three cruises I have been there for every net recovery and basically jump around like a kid in a candy store waiting to see what comes up from those dark depths. I am continually amazed by what we see from each sample. The variety of these Mesopelagic marvels, figuring out what they are and being able to Photograph them is a great part of the cruise for me. I am forever learning new things about their ways of adapting to that part of the ocean that even we, as sea-going researchers seldom see. I hope that the pictures that I take do have some value other than to just myself and at least show a snap-shot of life that deserves our attention as much as the megafauna out there. The following images were taken during our most recent NAAMES3 cruise and are a brief sample of some of the Beasties from the Black that we encountered. Enjoy and feel free to comment on any images.

Sargassum swimming crab, STA2

Hatchet Fish, STA1,2 & 6

Crustaceans and Arthropods

Snails, Sea Angels and Nematodes

Viperfish and Dragonfish

Snipe Eel

Glass Squid – Planktoteuthus

Black Dragonfish

And finally a big thank you to the crew of the R/V Atlantis! See you again soon!!!

Written by Stuart Halewood (UCSB, ERI Group)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2017 at 4:21 pm and is filed under NAAMES (North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.