Boats and boats and boats!

This week, my advisor Kevin Boswell, fellow lab-mate Adam Zenone, and Chunyan Li from LSU joined the party. Here, we were conducting acoustic surveys at the North Salt Lagoon with two Unmanned Surveying Vessels, one equipped with 4 types of sonars, and another with an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP).

These two panoramic shots show how variable the conditions in the Arctic can be. They were taken one day apart, the first shows a cloudy, windy day with icebergs littering the beach and the second shows a beautiful, sunny day with most of the ice pushed off of the beach. We prefer the latter as the ice makes it very difficult to beach seine.

Meanwhile, back at Florida International University our intern Tim Jelavich is taking care of my sculpins that will be used in an isotope incorporation experiment that will help us better understand changes in dietary composition of wild sculpin over time using stable isotope analysis.

In order to keep Arctic fish alive in Florida we have to use a special aquatic system that uses two 3kW air conditioners to cool water down to as low as 4°C.

I have mentioned how pretty the ice is several times; please forgive me because it won’t be the last. My favorite ice is the blue ice, the locals say that this blue ice is multi-year ice, though I am not sure if there is any science to back this up. All I know is it is beautiful!

This year we have added offshore trawling surveys to our sampling regiment. Here you see Ann Robertson from the beach seining team having a conversation with JJ Vollenweider from the offshore team. This boat, named Launch 1273, was contributed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and will be an invaluable asset to this project!