{"id":300,"date":"2019-05-17T09:12:59","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T13:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/?p=300"},"modified":"2019-06-04T14:46:12","modified_gmt":"2019-06-04T18:46:12","slug":"nearing-the-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/nearing-the-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearing the End"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are down to our last 2 days of science time on the cruise.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t really mean an end to the work though.\u00a0 We need to wash everything and pack it away for our next cruise in November.\u00a0 We also need to pack our samples and fill out tons of paper work in order to get them shipped home.\u00a0 And we need to disassemble the lab and return all of the borrowed equipment back in to the ship.<\/p>\n

We will meet up the Nathaniel B Palmer (aka \u201cthe Natty B\u201d) in a few days to transfer containers of fresh supplies for Palmer Station onto the Gould (aka \u201cthe Larry G\u201d).\u00a0 The Natty B is too large to tie up at the Palmer dock, so they can\u2019t deliver the supplies themselves.\u00a0 After that, we will continue heading north to pick up the leopard seal researchers at Cape Shirreff.<\/p>\n

There is another group of researchers on the ship; Dr. Chuck Amsler and his colleagues are studying macroalgal (aka seaweeds) diversity and distribution, and the invertebrates that live with them.\u00a0 They are the divers that I mentioned in an earlier post.\u00a0 They go out in teams of two, with an observer and a zodiac driver (one of the marine techs), and collect samples either along a defined transect line, or in a defined region of the seafloor.\u00a0 They also take video while they dive \u2013 of the seafloor, not necessarily each other, although that does sometimes happen.\u00a0 What they collect is brought back to the ship, and the researchers spend several hours sorting the samples and archiving them for different analyses.\u00a0 Their dives last less than an hour because the water is so cold, even with their dry suits and the insulation that they wear inside.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019d like to make special mention of the fact that Maggie Amsler completed her 500th<\/sup> Antarctic dive on this cruise!\u00a0 (Maggie has her back to us, in the dive suit with the blue\/white pattern on the shoulders<\/p>\n

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The samples are processed for things like genetic analyses and fatty acid analyses, which allow identification of relationships between individuals and what resources they are using\/making.\u00a0 They also create archival records of the seaweeds by pressing and drying them (see below).\u00a0 These are remarkably stable, and most macroalgologists (I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s the correct term) have their own individual collections (called herbaria).\u00a0 Kind of like stamp collecting.<\/p>\n

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The reason they are doing this project is because it\u2019s been several decades since the region has been surveyed for seaweed diversity and distribution, and the extent of change in seasonal air\/water temperature and sea ice cover suggested that this would likely have impacted the seaweeds.\u00a0 Macroalgae are important in the benthic invertebrate food web.\u00a0 While they do not directly serve as sources of nutrition, they can be hiding places for smaller invertebrates, or juveniles of larger species, and they provide surfaces where diatoms and bacteria (which serve as food) can grow.\u00a0 So, the loss of, or change in distribution of, seaweeds will have effects upwards through the food chain.\u00a0 Furthermore, because many macroalgae are chemically defended, there is much interest in whether some organisms have evolved to tolerate these chemicals in order to be able to actually eat seaweeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are down to our last 2 days of science time on the cruise.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t really mean an end to the work though.\u00a0 We need to wash everything and pack it away for our next cruise in November.\u00a0 We also need to pack our samples and fill out tons of paper work in order…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}