What are we doing out here? Well......

          As we are currently on our way into the Bay of Campeche, we have found ourselves with a bit of a transit to our next set of sampling stations. After having full sets of stations to sample pretty much on each of my shifts during the cruise since we got into Mexican waters, this 30 or so hours of transit time has allowed me a little time to catch up on blog posts and get some other much needed work done.
   

So, many of you are probably wondering what all this sampling that I've been doing is? Well in a nutshell we are using satellite imagery to determine frontal boundaries in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Frontal Boundaries or fronts are areas which separate water masses of two different densities, and can be identified by marked differences in properties like temperature, salinity, currents, or enhanced chlorophyll concentrations.Currently we are using satellite imagery to identify these regions in the GOM and input these and other properties from past sampling into a model, created by Barbara Muhling at the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center which identifies regions that have a higher possibility of containing Atlantic Bluefin Tuna larvae. Transects (A plotted course with set sampling station locations) is then created to cover the area of interest. The above image is a image of Sea Surface Temperature with our sampling transects (indicated by the X's) overlayed ontop of it. The different colors indicate different Sea Surface Temperatures, and this is an image of our current sampling the beginnings of the Loop Current, just off the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
       At each station we sampling using a variety of nets as well as a CTD, which is a sensor that is attached to a winch and profiles the water column as it descends as well as collects water using niskin bottles at three specified depths.

The CTD allows us to record the temperature, salinity, and fluorescence ( the amount of light emitted). A neuston net with a mesh size of 0.950 mm is used to sample the surface of the water as well as sub-surface between 1-10 meters, a bongo net is dropped down to 200 m and towed obliquely (meaning it is raised to the surface continuously sort of in a diagonal line to the surface).
       While all of this is going on we are continually sampling the distribution of fish eggs, and invertebrate zooplankton while underway in between stations using a continuous underway fish egg sampler (CUFES) pronounced "coo-fus".
       Anyway, as we did last year we are partnered with Mexican scientists from INAPESCA, Instituto Nacional de Pesca, the Mexican government's agency similar to NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in the US. During sampling we split into two teams and work 12 hours on and 12 hours off as we are sampling 24 hours a day. I'm working on the Midnight to Noon shift along with two scientists from INAPESCA, on a usual shift we usually go through about 4-5 stations which take about 1.5 hrs to complete and usually another hour to transit between them, during the transit I am usually processing the chl samples while my sampling partners are running CUFES and cataloging the samples. All of this usually takes the entire transit time so there isn't much of a chance to break even to catch meals. But after I got used to sleeping during the day, which is always a struggle for me the first few days, you pretty much welcome the sampling, because as long as your focused on a task you keep from being tired.
    Well I hope you enjoyed a short look into what we're doing out here, I know it was a little technical but if you have any questions, especially any T.R.U.E. divers or SCUBAnauts out there reading this please ask me about it.  Anyway the weathers been warm, and the seas have been staying Calm!
So take care 'till next post, I'm gonna get some sleep.

Sennai