Week 4: The Weatherbird II -Georgia Lombardy

We are still alive! It is safe to say I am extremely exhausted after these four weeks, but even through the exhaustion I still had an amazing time at USF St. Petersburg. Tuesday we went out on the Florida Institute of Oceanography's Weatherbird II vessel. On our one day cruise, we carried out different sampling methods such as CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth), water quality, plankton net, neuston net, bongo net, an otter trawl, and a dredge.

Before we ran any of the sampling, we sent an ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) down to the ocean floor. Each student had about 3 minutes to operate the vehicle and roam around the sea floor! I also had the privilege of throwing the ROV into the ocean too!

Throwing $250,000 worth of equipment into the ocean!

We were split up unto teams to help carry out different samplings. My team participated in an offshore day time otter trawl and a nearshore night time dredge. The otter trawl was my favorite, I loved assisting the doors into the water and sending out and pulling in the net.

The otter trawl team! Station 1 (Offshore)

While pulling in the net and separating vertebrates from invertebrates was awesome, we soon started to feel stinging all over our hands and quickly came to find out we were all stung by hydrozoans. It definitely made it hard to continue working at some points but with some anti-sting cream on our hands, we all pushed through and got the job done! The stinging definitely overpowered all seasickness I had which I guess was a good thing!

After a 45 minute break, it was time to start the night sampling at station 2. I was on the dredge team for this station, but once the otter trawl came up with hundreds of crabs, there were very few students brave enough to handle them during sorting so I jumped in. Between Domonique and I, we sorted lots of crabs! I definitely became a pro at picking up crabs super fast!

Sorting Crabs!

It is safe to say, marine research on a vessel for extended periods of time is not meant for me solely because of how easily I get seasick. Besides that, I really did have a great time researching on the vessel. I love the idea that every day doing research holds an opportunity of pulling up new organisms. I couldn't have asked for a better team to pull in nets and get stung by hydrozoans with.

The Gang