Life & Times of S & D: KIMU trip#3

I love my job.

We spent 9 days in Kenai Fjords National Park.
Yumi managed to get John AND Gary on this trip and we had so much fun.
(and also worked really hard, too)
The weather was FANTASTIC. It barely rained at all.
We did bird surveys for the first 4 days. and then we did ecosystem sampling the rest of the trip. This consisted of CTD casts, water column sampling, hydroacoustic sampling, zooplankton tows, and trawling for forage fish. LOTS of pictures from this trip.
It was magical.

John & Yumi talking shop

a baby gray whale checked out the boat
it came so close, we could have touched it

hooking up the CT to the bow of the Naiad

black-legged kittiwakes and a glaucous-winged gull

John barely fits in the Naiad

stretching out the back

bodies take a beating when out on the Naiad for 10-12 hrs/day

John fashioned a harness of sorts to keep him from flying out of the boat during the transects.

worked pretty well

already tired of bird surveys?

the RECON digital data recorder was misbehaving

taking a little lunch break

Gary & John off to photograph the gaggle of Kittlitz's that were on transect

the next 7 panoramas give a glimpse of the breathtaking scenery in Kenai Fjords.

ECOSYSTEM SAMPLING:

Capt. Yumi at the helm

getting ready to deploy the CTD (on the bottom) and the water sampler (gray tube on top)

collecting samples at different depths of the water column

putting the zooplankton net in the water column

rinsing it with seawater

removing the cod end from the zooplankton net

the zooplankton is stored in formaldehyde and shipped to a lab for species identification

John checking out the zoop

prepping water samples for measuring chlorophyll a which gives information about productivity

HYDROACOUSTICS
underwater acoustic scattering from a sonar is used to measure the biomass in the water

rigging up the acoustics sled

echogram on the left: red line is the bottom, blue specks are biomass of sorts

TRAWLING PHOTOS

Captain Hook snuck on board

getting the net in the water, once in the water it is towed behind the boat at a depth of ~15m

pulling the net back in

pulling the cod end up

sorting the catch

Yumi trying to get psyched about ANOTHER jelly

juvenile sculpins and gadids and pricklebacks

soft sculpin!

jellyfish

juvenile gadids

FINALLY! a forage fish!!! prowfish in the LAST tow of the trip.

Other pictures from the trip:

John is 6 '6" and had a really hard time fitting in the boat.

5 am pancakes!

the Big Bird taking a snooze

John made Yumi some starfish earrings.
You either had to be on the boat or have watched the movie 'Aquamarine' to understand this photo. I'm not even going to try to explain it.

the next series of 10 photos were taken by John. He wanted to take some 'non-standing photos'.

Jeff! Yumi got Erica to floss!

this one's for our dentists

John's shoes

BBQ buffalo burgers!

black bear sighting - can you find it?

Erica let me borrow her dry suit, booties and gloves.
I normally don't like swimming in the ocean because I don't like getting zooplankton in my orifices, but I opened my big mouth and told her that I would be tempted to go swimming if I had my goggles - and of course, brought her dry suit gear AND a mask!
That's Erica's towel. She was going to share it with me.

I was a little too buoyant even after all the 'burping' so I didn't make it underneath the acoustics sled but Erica went in! and dove underneath it TWICE! without her dry suit!

so instead, I did a little synchronized swimming

Erica's acoustics image. with a little help from John on Photoshop

Erica brought her bike and trainer - we took turns getting some exercise in the hold.
yes, that's my ball in the background. a little tricky to use on a moving boat.

turns out that John is a major chocoholic - we had no idea, and apparently we didn't bring enough chocolate!

more boat shananigans

ArcView is driving Erica bananas cuckoo.
John looks pretty good in her shades.

cleaning time!

John's first ipod experience.
He's listening to rap!

Mike, Alisa & Eli set sail from Kodiak several days before our trip started.
They are on their way to Australia and will take the next year to get there, making many stops along the way. Their first stop was Seward and the plan was to find us on the water enroute to Seward.
We anchored up in Moonlight Cove and this crazy fog started to roll in.
And, of course, just like in the movies a sailboat came through the fog and headed in our direction.
You should check out their blog.
They are on an adventure of a life time!