Thanksgiving, 2005

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! Hope everyone has a great turkey day. It was a work day here as normal, but the crew is fixing up a huge Thanksgiving Day feast.

I saw the coolest thing last night. We heard that dolphins were on the bow. At first, looking down into the black water, it looked like you could not see anything, but as my eyes adjusted I started seeing bioluminescence in the bow wake created by the ship. Then, you could start to make out the shapes of the bodies. The dolphins swimming through the water were outlined in the bioluminescence. It is hard to describe, but imagine neon green torpedoes swimming and crossing and splashing. And you could hear the dolphins (probably short-beaked common) whistling. It was so wild and magical.

We then went down to the very bottom of the ship, in the bow, where they have a couple observation windows. You climb down two hatches, then down ladders into this little compartment with a mattress. You lay down on your stomach and you look through these portholes. Unfortunately, we could not see the dolphins, but we had an incredible light show made by nature and the bioluminescence. Awesome! I will have to go back down there during the day to get good looks at the animals through the water.

Yesterday, we were very close to land, only about 4 miles off of Piedras Blancas (although we never could see land.) First thing in the morning there were 5 humpbacks. We launched the small boat and successfully got four biopsy samples. Then, suddenly, it turned into “Animal Kingdom”, there were sea lions, and three species of dolphins, and birds everywhere! The small boat was so close to the whales that when one of whales tail-slapped the scientists got sprayed. AH! I can't wait until the next launch, it will finally be my turn to go out and see some animals...

Monday night the oceanographers released “ARGO”, a $16,000 piece of equipment! This is the wave of the future, about 2,000 have been deployed around the world as part of a huge international collaboration. It is a CTD (see beloe) which goes down to 2,000 meters, and then comes to the surface after 10 days, transmits all of the data via satellite, and then goes back down to the depths. It does this for 6 years, pretty impressive. Saw my first fin whales and "streakers" (Striped Dolphin). The birds have been kind of slow, but lots of Northern Fulmar, Leach's Storm-petrel, Cassin's, and some shearwaters. Today we also saw a tropic bird which was pretty cool. Still no albatross.

We are headed offshore for awhile now, headed southwest. There is a huge storm in the Pacific, but we are hoping to be in a pocket away from it. Cross your fingers it goes north!

A CTD's (conductivity, temperature, depth) primary function is to detect how the conductivity and temperature of the water column changes relative to depth. Conductivity and temperature information is valuable because the salinity (the concentration of salt) of the seawater can be derived from these two variables.

Shannon on deck with the Farallones in the background.

The David Starr Jordan

Click here to learn more about the boat Shannon calls home for the next three weeks.