MUD

Current Position: N 70°48'  W 134°36'

It's been a week since I boarded the Amundsen and I'm getting into the rhythm of ship life. After the initial day off, the sampling stations started and didn't quit. We have 13 stations in all and we are now half way through. At each station there is a plethora of information gathered from the sea: a sediment profile and topographic maps; the collection of organisms that live in the sediment, on the sea floor and in the water column; water column nutrients; and measurements of organic contaminants and mercury levels in everything from sediment to plankton to fish. On top of that there are the marine mammal and sonar teams who work together to test whether sonar equipment, typically used on commercial fishing vessels, can detect marine mammals at the species level as well as provide information on their behaviour. The level of collaboration and shared data is really impressive. I am just starting to get a handle on the scale of the Arctic Net project.

My part of all this is in the mud. Sifting through mud from the box cores (cubes of mud collected from the sea floor) and the Agassiz trawl (a miniature version of a bottom trawling net). It can be an endless and dirty job but it’s balanced by the exciting diversity you discover. Benthic fauna vary immensely depending on depth and sediment type. The most interesting species we have found so far are the basket stars, fan worms, sea spiders, soft corals, anemones that live on the backs of snails, bright colourfully patterned sun starfish as well as the jurassic looking isopods. My nerdiest and most excited moment of sorting came when I found the elephant octopus.  Although not technically an octopus (or a squid either), it looks like one with wings which it uses for maneuvering. Small enough to fit in my hand, I picked it up from our sample and rinsed it off to find a little blue octopus! As soon as I put it in water it changed deep red in colour (a fitting colour for anger) and inked a few times.  A few hours later it eventually relaxed and changed again to white.... so cool! These critters are tough: surviving the quick haul up from depth (100 meters or more) to the surface which would kill most fish. Invertebrates are survivors; if we don't have time to identify and sort everything the same day we keep them overnight and find them very much alive in the morning. The isopods in particular will still be crawling around the desk when you are trying to keep them in neat piles for counting even after being left in the fridge all night not submerged in water. The cockroaches of the sea!