We wrapped up a successful week of sampling with our final net tows and niskin bottle collections yesterday.  With the help of the amazing crew and fellow scientists on board, we got into a good swing of things collecting samples from low oxygen and normal oxygen conditions.  As mentioned in the previous post, site 858 is known for having low oxygen so I am excited to get home and take a look at what was collected.  And don’t worry, the final brass messenger we packed remained safely with us until the final tow!

Yesterday, we also set up a two experiments to run for 24 hours that we just wrapped up as well.  The first was a second run of egg production experiments where a female copepod is isolated so we can count the amount of eggs she produces in 24 hours.  Unfortunately with both runs, when in low oxygen water, we found that females produced very few or no eggs at all.  Our second experiment was a preliminary experiment to observe where copepods are located in low versus normal oxygen conditions.  We collected some copepods with an extra net tow and placed them in bottles with two very different oxygen conditions.  We’re not sure what to make of our results yet, but we did notice a difference when comparing the two.  Copepods in the low oxygen bottles remained mainly close to the top with a few dispersed throughout the bottle while in the higher oxygen concentrated bottles, copepods were more spread throughout the bottle with some at the top.  We plan to run more of these experiments back in the lab with more bottles and more oxygen levels. 

We will have more to report in August when we head out for DeZoZoo cruise #2 and have had a chance to process more of our samples.  Until then, it’s time to finish packing up and head out on deck for a group photo.  We will keep you posted!