Rachel filters water collected at 500 m in the GOM
Rachel Thomas from Florida State University's Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences Department is a doctoral student in the Knapp Lab and she is our guest-blogger today sharing a bit of her research and cruise goals:
"My personal goal on this cruise is to be able to identify bluefin tuna through a microscope. I’ve never seen fish larvae before, so everything the “fish team” brings up in the nets is new and exciting to me! Most of my previous work is involved in the Southern Ocean, where there are unused nutrients in the surface ocean. This gives us a unique ability to look at how phytoplankton are reacting to different physiological stresses, such as light and nutrient availability."
One of these nutrients, is Nitrate (NO3) which is a form of dissolved inorganic nitrogen that is utilized by phytoplankton in the ocean (Malerba et al 2012). One of the aspects of our project (NF1704 & NF1802 is to examine the dynamics between these inorganic compounds at different depths of the surface water column (0-500 m).
Typical nitrate vertical profile comparison, (modified from A. Nahian Avro)
T. Kelly and Rachel Thomas recover the CTD rosette
"The Gulf of Mexico has a very different light regime compared to the Southern Ocean, and little to no nitrate in the surface waters. Our research team hopes to explore how these contrasts are expressed in the isotopic composition of subsurface nitrate in the Gulf of Mexico. We will also use the isotopic composition of subsurface nitrate in the Gulf of Mexico to understand the nutrient sources for primary productivity fueling bluefin tuna growth in surface waters."
Click here for last year's blog post from Rachel's experiences during NF1704.
A bit of trivia: the Southern Ocean is the fourth largest of the world's ocean basins and extends to Antarctica. Psst, how many oceans are there? (click here for an answer)
Rachel Thomas and Alanna Mnich ready to deploy an SVP drifter on the fan tail
Today, one of our youngest scientists, Ms. Kiana Ford shares a brief post. This is Kiana’s second cruise aboard Nancy Foster and has been volunteering in our lab since January 2017. She is now a Senior at the University of Miami's RSMAS and got back from an amazing semester abroad with the UGalapagos & Isabella Oceanographic Institute in Ecuador just a few days before the ship started its journey.
Kiana makes friends with the locals in the Galapagos, Ecuador
Kiana shared with our blog “my goal for the cruise is to help find some bluefin tuna! I would also like to be comfortable jumping into any science role during the cruise, from deploying nets on the back deck to running the computer programs in the dry lab. My favorite experiences from participating in the oceanographic surveys is to get to know other scientists and crew members, and seeing how everyone contributes to some aspect of the expedition. My research goals when I return to land is to complete my senior thesis examining larval lobster populations collected in southern Cuba during NF-16-02-03. This summer I am eager to begin my internship with Harbor Wildwatch, a non-profit organization in Gig Harbor, WA. They organize outreach events to educate the public on marine and environmental topics."
Thanks Kiana! She disembarked during our port-stop in Pensacola, but we will see you soon in the NOAA FORCES Lab in the Fall semester.
We have our first guest blog post of the survey! We feature our OPS officer for leg 1 of NF1802, LTJG Johns!
LTJG Johns shared with the blog: “My name is LTJG Kristin and I studied Biological sciences at Rutgers University. I am the Operations Officer on the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster. As the operations officer, my job is to ensure the science gets completed in a safe and efficient way. My goal is to communicate and coordinate with the science party, ship's bridge team, and crew for a successful project and happy team! My job is to look out the window at a beautiful ocean and help science happen. Oh, and drive ships,
LTJG Johns in much colder climate!
What’s better than that?!”
An officer “OPS” leads and communicates on behalf of the ship’s officers and multiple ship departments. It can be a challenging role, but in my opinion, it’s also very fun because in one ‘field season’ they get to learn about a lot different topics that can range from mapping the sea floor, to projects that use scuba diving as a tool to monitor fish populations, to collecting awesome larval fish, to deploying extremely sensitive scientific equipment to monitor the ocean in real time. If you have any questions for LTJG Johns, please comment below and feel free to learn more about the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps or see previous blog posts by other NOAA Corps officers (Norton, Zygas)
Top: NOAA Shiptracker map of transit
around Florida
Bottom: Four NOAA Ships meet off the
Dry Tortugas!
Our survey started in Jacksonville, FL, and did a fun U-shaped track around the Florida Peninsula until we reached our study destination: the grand Gulf of Mexico. We even sailed past several other NOAA ships doing work in the area (NOAA Ship party!) to include the NOAA Ships Okeanos Explorer(EX), Oregon II(R2), and the Pisces(PI)! The NOAA Ships fleet support science in multiple fields including oceanographic, fisheries, and atmospheric research.
Join us for another adventure on NOAA Ship Nancy Foster!
It's been a week already, and we are now in the Northern Gulf of Mexico searching for the elusive bluefin tuna larvae. They have been hiding from us, but we are relentless and will keep searching! Our strategy is to target some favorable habitat which is usually in between oceanographic features.
I hope you learn something new during our journey and feel free to ask questions!
Scientists and crew sign the NF1703/04 NOAA Corps flag
First of all thank you for following our research expedition by reading our blog! My name is Estrella Malca and I was the chief scientist for this survey (NF1704) aboard the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster. What does that mean? Each project has a designated person that takes a leading role on the logistical, scientific and reporting aspect of the entire survey.
One last selfie!
Estrella (Chief Sci) and Samantha (Senior survey tech)
I love to figure out the 'tetris' of things, so this year's cruise has been challenging but fun! Why challenging? Well, usually we have 6 months+ to prepare for our surveys: buying equipment, supplies, assigning scientists and volunteers to participate, and most importantly, securing any relevant permits as well as communicating with the ship's officers and crew about the multiple operational aspects of our project at sea. However, because of our very recent NOAA RESTORE project selected for funding, we had just two months to get a brand new project planned, signed and delivered on time! Without the rest of the science team, there is no way we can come out here and successfully achieve all of our research goals and deliverables!
We had the pleasure to continue to collaborate with several of our partners and also obtained new research connections!
NF1704 Leg 1 scientists
NF1704 Leg 2 scientists
Estrella and Niki deploy our very last satellite tracked drifter
Here is a list of our NF1704 accomplishments!! We were quite busy this past month as you can see!
ü500++ Tunas collected, more than 600 specimens individually measured at sea
ü90 CTD casts: Depths were (300m, 500m, 1500m, and 2500m). The sensors we used on the CTD included temperature, oxygen, salinity, chlorophyll-a and CDOM, conductivity, PAR. üContinuous measurements of currents (ADCP) from Key West to Progreso and to Miami
üContinuous measurement of flow through (TSG) from Key West to Progreso and to Miami
ü136 net tows (25m): 120 Bongo-90 (240 jars) & 16 Mini-bongo net tows
ü16 Mesozooplankton and 16 microzooplankton samples
ü120 Live-sorted plankton samples ü95 specimens selected for genetic analysis * 40+ Open House attendees. Our outreach event welcomed our scientific counterparts, students, professors, and fishermen in Progresso, Mexico
We hope that our projects will fill in a lot of the gaps about the biogeochemical ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico as it relates to bluefin tuna research for the Western Atlantic stock. Our results will be shared with local and regional stakeholders like NOAA, ICCAT, among others. Soon, we will get started working up the data! Stay tuned and read our posts!
Group selfie, navigating into to the port of Miami
Today’s post features LTJG Nikita "Niki" Norton, and officially welcomes her
to the FORCES Lab family! Niki is the current "Florida Bay Operations Officer," replacing LTJG
Aras Zygas. As a part of
the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps, she operates sampling platforms to
facilitate scientific research and provides logistical and administrative
support to NOAA’s mission. She shared with the blog:
Niki records the flowmeter data into our logsheets
"For the last
three years, I was assigned to the NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada out of Newport, Oregon, conducting fisheries surveys from
Vancouver, Canada all the way down to San Diego, CA. Along with the responsibilities of being
Navigation Officer and Medical Person in Charge, my primary duty was to
“drive” the 210’ Fisheries Survey Vessel every day for 200+ days a year
Niki and Loni on the back deck, waiting to deploy the CTD
"Many of the sampling techniques that are routinely performed
by research groups on the West Coast to collect plankton are exactly the same
as those conducted by the FORCES lab to collect larval fish!
"This included
Bongos, Neustons, MOCNESS, and CTDs on many of the projects. We performed extensive mid-water stern
trawls with a net the size of a football field to catch fish like Pacific hake
and sardine. We followed and tagged endangered Resident Killer Whale pods and
acoustically monitored beaked whales at 4000m depth. The remainder of the year, the ship completed Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) transects and hydrographic missions in the Farallons and Channel Islands.
Niki and Estrella deploy a satellite tracked drifter
"While many of the operations may be the same, this new job
with the Southeast Fisheries Science Center is quite different - as is the
scenery! Rather than the whipping cold
wind of the Pacific Northwest, the hot sun in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico
is one of my favorite parts of the job. With the FORCES Lab, I get to work "on deck" to deploy and recover gear, wash down nets, assist with station planning, and see the plankton and water samples we catch up close!
NOAA Ship Nancy Foster, Brewers Bay, USVI
"When I am not underway as a
scientist, I work in the office to ensure that the lab has everything they
need logistically to sail each year by assisting with cruise planning and administrative
budgeting. Now that the first year of
sampling has come to a close, I am very excited to see what new projects I will get to be a part of and hope to use my background in reef fish ecology
and microbiology to explore new research with the FORCES lab – while getting ready
for next year!"
Girl Power! The women behind the science in NF1703!
Top (L-R): Sarah H., Niki, Trika, Sarah P.
Bottom (L-R): Kristen, Vanessa, Jess, Alexis
Before we return back to our corresponding labs, and start to process our samples, we have one more post from one of our collaborators! Dr. Bob Arnone was part of the land-support team which guided our survey with satellite updates and oceanographic analyses of daily conditions. The GOM is a very large and dynamic ecosystem and we can use all the help we can get! Bob and two post-doctoral researchers (Brooke Jones and Inia Soto) prepared a blog post to share some of their work at the University of Southern Mississippi. I hope you enjoy it and next year, we encourage our collaborators to do joint posts like this one to share their land based work as well!
Robert Arnone and Brooke Jones in the OWX showing the cruise track
of the Nancy Foster in the Gulf of Mexico and the daily ocean conditions
"We are Prof. Robert Arnone, Dr. Brooke Jones, and Dr. Inia Soto from the University of Southern Mississippi, Division of Marine Science, Stennis Space Center. Our Ocean Weather Laboratory (OWX) was able to work with the researchers aboard the Nancy Foster during the RESTORE Bluefin tuna survey (NF1704) this past May and early June 2017. We provided daily updates on relevant ocean conditions while we followed the ship's cruise track as well as abnormal conditions that might affect the research results. Many of the ocean products we provided are new, and working with the Foster cruise allowed us to compare the observations from our lab with ship observations. Our goal is to demonstrate that our daily ocean products can provide the Foster a better understanding of sampling for Bluefin tuna. We want to continue to work with the research group to optimize our products and the packages we provide.
"The OWX Laboratory was established to characterize the daily ocean conditions and abnormal events in the Gulf of Mexico. Our focus is to assemble products from satellite remote sensing ocean color data, sea surface temperature, and several physical ocean circulation models to define ongoing ocean activity. Our daily products include the ocean bio-optical properties of chlorophyll-a, turbidity, water clarity, phytoplankton absorption, and particle back-scattering and physical oceanographic conditions (temperature, salinity, currents, mixed layer depth). The OWX Laboratory research is focused on the understanding of the interactions between the oceanographic conditions and the ecosystem. New OWX products also include weekly dynamic "anomalies" which can help us identify abnormal physical or biological conditions that are occurring so possible bio-physical oceanographic events can be identified in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Ocean Weather Laboratory at USM with various screens visually monitoring ocean conditions using Google Earth
"The daily OWX Laboratory products provided locations to the Foster for adaptive sampling to help support optimum data collection and understand how Bluefin tuna are responding to changing bio-physical conditions, as well as identify events such as harmful algal blooms, flooding events, coral reef mortality, and others that may be occurring in the Gulf of Mexico.
"The OWX Laboratory visually displays animated ocean properties in several monitors using Google Earth. These tools provide capability to integrate ship tracks and observed data with satellite and model data so we can coordinate with ship operations.
"The videos below show Google Earth animations of the OWX Lab's animated daily products of the nowcast bio-physical processes (Chlorophyll, currents, and salinity) and the dynamic abnormal ocean conditions with the ship track for the Nancy Foster Bluefin tuna survey for the week (May 22-27, 2017)."
We love to share our collaborators' research, especially when the OWX Lab's main focus is to provide new capabilities for ship sampling so that optimum data can be collected and related to the changing ocean conditions. We hope that the daily OWX products can be used for fisheries applications very soon!
