Instead of watching a parade and fireworks on the 4th, I spent most of the day traveling from Vermont to Victoria, British Columbia. Jackie Grebmeier and Dr. On Monday, Jackie and Lee checked on cargo to bring on board while Joanne Haynes, a member of the Australian Navy, and of our team, walked around downtown Victoria.
In the late morning, we picked up the last member of our team, Marisa Guarinello, who had come from Seattle by ferry. We walked along the beach and found a spot to enjoy a late afternoon meal of fresh fruit, bread, and cheese. Sitting on the beach, we were able to see the Olympic range of mountains across the Strait of Juan de Fuca where we watched what appeared to be sea lions feeding just off shore. When we sailed on the 6 th , we traveled through the strait for nearly 6 hours and then continued along the west coast of Vancouver Island for several more before heading across the Gulf of Alaska.
The mile long Strait is the regional international boundary between the United States and Canada. The pictures of her adventures become a book for my grand nieces. Lee Cooper, Dr. Kelly has only been at IOS for a year and a half, but she has already been to sea more than five times; she says she just loves going out. She received both her undergraduate and Masters degrees from the University of Victoria, and her specialty is plankton.
She is currently collecting samples for Dr. John Nelson, a research scientist at IOS. At nearly every station, Kelly will drop two large nets over the side to a depth of m. The nets take two samples simultaneously and capture zooplankton tiny marine animals in small filter bottles called cod ends attached to the bottom of each net. When the nets come up, Kelly will spray the nets to rinse all of the zooplankton into the cod ends before dumping the contents into buckets to be filtered and preserved.
The samples that Kelly collects will be used in two projects. The first is to classify and quantify zooplankton; by preserving these samples in formalin, their structure remains intact and allows the scientists to identify them and thus study species distribution and population size. Kelly will preserve the other samples in ethanol for a study of population genetics.
