Last monday I went out with one of the science groups to help with their sampling process. They are studying what types of food krill and other small animals are eating and what is available at the bottom of the food chain throughout the season.First they throw this big cone shaped fine mesh net over board and drop it to 70 meters and drive forward as it is reeled back up.
Penguins are much more graceful in the water!
This bucket on the end catches everything in the net path and they can survey it and take several samples for different experiments.
For this particular drag they were looking at size of individuals. This way you can figure out how old the krill are and if they are all one year old krill or multi year krill which is important for the health of the food supply for the penguin colonies in the area.
Krill!
For this sample all the organisms that were caught are separated by size and them flash frozen so the pigments contained inside them (and the food they were eating) is preserved for testing in the lab. Liquid nitrogen is used to freeze the specimens and then keep them frozen until they return to the lab.
It was pretty cool to get out on the boats and see what other science was being done on station first hand, although the ocean was very rocky and we spent a lot of time not moving so I got very sea sick. Gross.
