It's already the end of another day! With Andy unable to SCUBA with an ear infection, I was working with one of the habitat technicians for part of the day on deploying our equipment. What a technician he is though, Otter (Mark Hulsbeck) has logged over 200 days on Aquarius! Extremely knowledgeable and great to get along with, it's good to know we're under his care down here. Had a really cool Skype call with a university from Honduras (thanks for coming down to translate Aileen!), and we may even end up collaborating with them in the future!
Experiment-wise, we quickly conducted our first preliminary analyses on our data today and discussed them with Andy's adviser, Dr. Deron Burkepile. Not quite what we have been expecting, but that's not always a bad thing and it is exciting to see where we're gonna end up with it! We've moved our study site to a new area (thanks Ryan!) so that we can examine if there are differences in sites, or if the trends we are witnessing hold in new areas!
Experiment-wise, we quickly conducted our first preliminary analyses on our data today and discussed them with Andy's adviser, Dr. Deron Burkepile. Not quite what we have been expecting, but that's not always a bad thing and it is exciting to see where we're gonna end up with it! We've moved our study site to a new area (thanks Ryan!) so that we can examine if there are differences in sites, or if the trends we are witnessing hold in new areas!
While again waiting for our decoys to "soak" and scare the fish, I noticed some very odd behavior on the work deck! Several groups of Sergeant Majors (pictured below) were doing a circular dance and rubbing themselves on what appeared to be some sort of coralline or algal growth on the habitat. Investigating further, I noticed it was actually a bunch of eggs!
It was really impressive to watch the constant care of the eggs by the parents! Unfortunately, in the area there are -plenty- of barracuda and I feared that we would soon have a "Finding Nemo" scenario. One quick approach for some filming resolved that idea for me though, they immediately broke off and began ferociously nipping and biting at me! Though it didn't hurt, this would be more likely to scare a fish predator off and maybe think twice about an easy meal. What you don't see in the video below is that every time he goes off camera, he is biting at me!
The cool day continued while walking back out to collect our equipment. Some Spotted Eagle Rays decided to drop by the habitat and hang out for a while! Incredibly docile to divers and rather large, these guys are mid-water predators and are even known for leaping out of the water like a whale breaching. I managed to catch one eating and you can see the schooling behavior of the yellowtail snapper and creole wrasse after it leaves as they try to protect themselves.
That just about does it for today! Tomorrow CBS will be around filming us as we deploy our experiments for the day. Pretty exciting and I don't even have to hear my own voice since we will be SCUBA diving, haha. In other news I found out I will be traveling to Nome, Alaska on the 6th of July for a little while for some work there. It's going to be a very busy summer. O.o
See you tomorrow!
- Bree
See you tomorrow!
- Bree