Guess this was my first real oceanographic cruise, with everyone on shifts, and never getting any sleep and stuff like that. It was actually great fun, except for the first afternoon when the sea was just an itsy bitsy bit rough (20 knot winds), and everyone was feeling quite queasy by the time dinner time came. We might all have been ok with a bit of good food in us, but this happened to be the day the cook decided on sashimi..... and the sight of raw fish was just not the thing for us. I was actually quite proud of being the 3rd to leave the dinner table rather precipitously, and one boy never even made it to the table. As it was clear we wouldn't be getting any work done in those conditions we anchored on the sheltered side of the bay for the night.
The Tansei-maru is a ship jointly owned by Tokyo university and JAMSTEC. It's about 40m long and, according to Dhugal, does not have a lot of comfort. It "only" has 3 toilets, a washing-mashine room with sinks and a bath room with a shower and a bath tub that is constantly filled and heated till 9pm. As we were only 8 scientists, the lab was more than large enough, and we all had our own table pretty much.
The next morning we started off bright and sunny, at 6am, and pretty much kept going non stop for 3 days. We had 6 hour shifts, and each was responsible for a net. The first day the planning was a bit off, so everyone was on shift when it was the other folk's nets, and also had to be there for their nets, when they were technically off shift. The second day got things straightened out, and on the third day the sea was too rough for nets in the morning so we did only VPR, and then only nets in the afternoon.
There were 3 different nets, the VPR (video plankton recorder), and some sediment traps, so we always had bunches to do. Dhugal and I were responsible of the VPR, and so had battery changes to do, and data downloading and sorting and such. We also got to recuperate the jellies from the ORI net the other group was doing. That was loads of fun, as there were innumerable interesting things in them. We even found several possible new species, and a few Dhugal had hardly ever seen.
From those nets come the samples of my newly started voucher specimen collection. I am now officially a jellyfish weirdo.
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