A Whole Lotta.... Nothing

Frustration abounds here in our camp. We set out for our first official field test on Thursday night, with two of our Coke bottle traps and two of Prof. Hamner's traps on a line to be tied to our boat. We deployed the four traps for 45 minutes, as planned, but when we reeled them back in.... nothing. All four traps were completely empty, which is virtually unheard of around here. We asked Hamner what the problem might be, and he suggested that the flow was too strong for the plankton to fight and get into the traps. We decided that later that same night we'd tie the four traps to the same rope again, but this time just let the rope drift along with the current, allowing plankton to get in. Just as we were about to commandeer the boat again, it started to rain. It was already late and we didn't want to spend our nights getting rained on, so we decided to postpone the mission until Friday night. On Friday, we were going to head out just after dinner, but in the last 5 minutes of dinner the skies opened up and it started to pour. No way were we going to go sit out in the heavy rain for an hour (besides, the new layer of fresh water at the top can drive plankton back down to greater depths, so we wouldn't have gotten much anyway). Hopefully tonight the skies will remain clear enough for us to do our tests. There's also a huge meteor shower going on in the Southern Hemisphere which was supposed to peak last night, but we should still be able to see something. We had originally timed our tests to be able to go out on the boat and watch the showers while we waited, but I guess we ended up with a slightly different kind of shower...

Since we have no data to work with at the moment, I've spent my days identifying the most commonly caught organisms from our first trial runs so our later analyses will go more quickly. I've also continued my daily snorkeling, so here's picture time from the Gump reef:


Here's what happens to cinder blocks when they die on the reef.


A bunch of fishes: the big one on the right is a Moorish Idol (Zanclus cornutus and you should thank me for not inserting an American Idol joke right here), and the blue guys with yellow tails are Neon Damsels. I'm not quite sure what the black and white fish at the bottom is, though note how you can only see the white tail - disruptive coloration in action.


A roving herd of Yellowstripe Goatfish. They have two "whiskers" on their chins that have organs to detect chemical and electrical signals given off by their prey, usually worms and crustaceans, hidden under the sand. Other types of fish typically follow them around and pick off any organisms that may have been kicked up into the water in the cloud of sand the goatfishes' hunting produces. In the upper center area of the picture, the fish without the yellow stripe down its body is just such a freeloader.