February 24, 2008

If you have a big ship, you’ll need a big wrench- or maybe seven or eight.
Karen played Vanna White so that you can grasp the size of the wrenches
(pun intended). How strong you have to be to wield them, we can only
imagine. During the transit to Station B, the engineers invited folks
down for a tour of the engine room. Keeping the main engine running is a
big job. The engineers also are responsible for the bow thrusters and
other mechanical issues on board.




Shortly after the tour we arrived at the station. The first thing we did
is CTD with the camera attached. Fabio is responsible for backing up the
photos and checking the settings. After the CTD, we tried to core.
There is a sizable swell today, so we have not been successful so far.
The megacorer bounced on the seafloor. When we recovered it several tubes
were empty and a couple of springs were broken. While we make repairs, we
will try to otter trawl and hope the swell settles down soon.



In the meantime, we are still busy processing samples, running chemical
analyses and sorting animals from the sediment. Here are two pictures of
macrofaunal polychaetes who live in the sediment (we call them infauna).
They were both a few millimeters long. The pictures were taken through
the microscope. The onuphid had to be coaxed out of his tube for the
picture. The cirratulid has a lot of curly branchea on its anterior
segments.





Position: 64 degrees 47.151 minutes South; 65 degrees 25.486 minutes West
Heading: 22.4 degrees
Speed over ground: 3.5 knots
Air temp. 5.1 degrees C; Water temp. 1.420 degrees C