Beasties from the Black

Now one thing that’s great about being part of a multi-disciplinary research cruise with a large number of scientists and their wide ranging studies is that you sometimes get to indulge in your own interests. By way of example during the 3 NAAMES cruises so far I have been able to insinuate myself into some of the work that the Peter Gaube’s Gaube lab ( HTTP://gaubelab.org APL-UW) have been doing onboard. Along with their extensive Eddy feature surveys that include the deployment of Echosounders, ADCP’s and Ctd’s, they also deploy a large sampling Net Trawl. This net gets deployed down to depths of 400-500m and targets layers of migrating organisms and their predators. Over the last three cruises I have been there for every net recovery and basically jump around like a kid in a candy store waiting to see what comes up from those dark depths. I am continually amazed by what we see from each sample. The variety of these Mesopelagic marvels, figuring out what they are and being able to Photograph them is a great part of the cruise for me. I am forever learning new things about their ways of adapting to that part of the ocean that even we, as sea-going researchers seldom see. I hope that the pictures that I take do have some value other than to just myself and at least show a snap-shot of life that deserves our attention as much as the megafauna out there. The following images were taken during our most recent NAAMES3 cruise and are a brief sample of some of the Beasties from the Black that we encountered. Enjoy and feel free to comment on any images.

And finally a big thank you to the crew of the R/V Atlantis! See you again soon!!!

Written by Stuart Halewood (UCSB, ERI Group)