Happy Birthday to Me... on a boat

So today was my birthday.  First time I've ever been at sea on my birthday, but not really a bad thing.  I'm out here where few people get to go, and with a great group of people.  Last night several of us were up rather late playing cards when I found that another girl's birthday is also the 18th, and she's the same age as me too.  

Later in the morning I found that one of the girls on the cruise had made me a little birthday sign... all out of things found at my lab bench (haha, nice one Kristine! Thanks!)   There are always a few birthdays on these cruises, and even if you don't tell anyone, the crew knows, and the cooks normally write a Happy Birthday message on the galley whiteboard in the morning, so everyone finds out before long...

So what did I do today?  Well, I was hoping that we'd get to deploy the multicorer at this station, but unfortunately, the station ended up being deeper than we'd thought and it would have taken too much wire time, so we got bumped from the schedule.  A little disappointing, because I'd have been really interested to get data here, but we need to keep heading south to get to Brazilian waters.  Instead I spent my time sitting out on the fantail of the ship, enjoying some sun, and watching the deck ops.

The ship's techs were able to fix the MOCNESS, and so the zooplankton team was out in full force.  Some photos of their recovery of their second deployment are below.  The 'Moc' is a special net that allows them to capture samples of zooplankton from different depths, which allows them to look at the community structure, and if they sample at noon and midnight, they can track the daily migrations of different species.

The Moc coming up for recovery

Recovering the Moc, two people hook the Moc on either side to help keep it from swinging as they get it back on deck.

Landing the Moc on the deck.

Rinsing out the sample from the end of each of the nets.  The grey containers that catch the samples are called 'Cod-ends'