This is our first post from a educator on the cruise with us! Nissa Ferm wears many hats. Currently she is a marine
science educator for the Seattle Aquarium’s Citizen Science Program. She also
attends the University of Washington in Tacoma pursuing a teaching certificate
in secondary science education. And in her spare time she also works as a
zooplankton taxonomist.
Just before dawn near
the NANOOS buoy deployment site I watched Jan Newton and Amy Sprenger lower a
plankton net off the back deck of the R/V Tommy Thompson. The net was dropped
to a depth of approximately ninety meters.
Being a biologist on a physical oceanography cruise I jumped at the
opportunity to observe the plankton community. I was excited to see what they
had caught despite the fact it was early and I hadn’t had my coffee yet. After
the plankton net had come to the surface, I learned that they were hoping to
collect pteropods for Nina Bednarsek (NOAA PMEL), who is looking at the effects
of ocean acidifications on biological organisms. Pterapods are especially vulnerable to ocean
acidification because they are shelled and that shell is made of
calcium-carbonate. They are little snails of the sea. Imagine a tiny snail,
less than one millimeter, flying through the water upside-down.
Luckily
when I looked at the contents of the sample I saw tiny pteropods. Goal reached!
If the pteropods aren’t swimming they sink, so they all ended up in the bottom
of my petri dish making it easier to find them. The little snails were interesting. But my
favorite type of zooplankton, copepods, was dashing about under the light of
the microscope. Off the coast, copepods comprise the majority of the
zooplankton community. These tiny crustaceans spend their whole life as
plankton. Plankton is just a function term describing an organism that is moved
about by water currents; like a small leaf being whisked down a stream. My
background is not in physical oceanography, but from conversations with the
NANOOS scientists I have been learning more about the physical processes which
move my favorite critters and pteropods around.
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