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JULY
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Cases of scientific equipment line the walls of the EDWIN LINK's passageways.
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Dr. Tammy Frank hangs light-shielding materials around her electrophysiological prep. Light pollution would ruin her experiments.
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Tammy uses an instrument called an electrophysiolgical prep to determine what light wavelengths her specimens see.
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Accomplished videographer Brian Cousin is doing double duty on the Gulf of Maine cruise. He's gathering footage for a video about bioluminescence, and he's bringing the Gulf of Maine to your desktop as our @Sea correspondent. Click below to learn more about Brian...
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DISPATCH 2: Final Preparations
@Sea correspondent/photographer, Brian Cousin
Dr. Edie Widder and graduate student Trevor Myslinski set up computers and imaging stations
in the EDWIN LINK's dry lab.
July 09, 11:30 am, Day Two in Port-- Preparations for the cruise are in full swing. The hallway outside the shipboard labs is piled with shipping cases and cartons full of equipment. Inside the dry lab, Tammy Frank, Edie Widder and Trevor Myslinski are setting up multiple workstations of optical sensing equipment, and hiding much of it behind light-blocking sheets of heavy-gauge plastic. These scientists will work in the dark during much of their data collection process. That's the way it has to be when you're investigating the response of deep-sea animals to naturally occuring changes in light levels. While diving in the JOHNSON-SEA-LINK (JSL) submersible, Tammy and Edie record light levels at each depth with a unique degree of precision afforded by submersible-based instruments. Tethered light meters deployed over the side of a ship can be subject to accuracy-corrupting phenomenon such as the ship moving up and down on the waves and changing the depth of the meter, or even a shadow cast by the ship itself, hundreds of feet above.
When our cruise gets underway, animals will be brought to the surface in sampling containers attached to the JSL, and via a trawl net lowered over the stern of the EDWIN LINK. For the purposes of Tammy's research, animals are captured by trawl in a thermally-insulated, light-tight container and transferred to the lab in total darkness. Any of the animals exposed to worklights on the ship's deck or fluorescent lights in the lab would be rendered useless as subjects for her scientific investigation of their visual systems.
Other scientists joining the cruise have been showing up throughout the day. Dr. Brad Seibel from the University of Miami is setting up his experiments on the respiration rates of midwater organisms. Dr. Wil Jaeckle from Illinois Wesleyan will be studying larval distribution patterns. WHOI's Dr. Sonke Johnson is coming to investigate the transparancy of gelatinous organisms and to make measurements of UV reflectance. Kathleen Tang will be looking at hearing systems of deep sea fish and bringing fish back to Woods Hole for further study. Uli Siebeck travelled the farthest to join the mission, coming from the University of Queensland in Australia. She will be studying the UV perception of fish by investigating the transmittance of the ocular media (cornea and lens). Fish may use UV light to see UV reflecting prey, or to communicate unseen by other species in the depths.
Our sailing time is 4:30 am Eastern time tomorrow, Saturday July 10. With our complement of diverse scientists and crew members and an ambitious schedule of scientific research, it's going to be an amazing couple of weeks!
Woods Hole Oceanographic's Bigelow Lab, named for the Institution's first director, Henry Bigelow.
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