Day 9

What is worse, having a sick student in your classroom or a sick individual on a ship at sea? I can assure that the latter is the worse situation. A number of the science party and the sub crew have developed a nasty cold (with alternating chills and fever), but to date and knock on wood, I have been unaffected.

What a long day today has been. Late last night Maya Wolf (U. Oregon) discovered that a particular specimen of the sea urchin Linopneustes longispinus was a robust male filled with active sperm. This was surprising because this species is known to be reproductive only in the fall season. So, Tracey Smart and I induced the remaining specimens to spawn and we finished sometime after 2:30 a.m. Fortunately, we were successful and have very healthy cultures of developing embryos. For the record, L. longispinus is accurately named and I still have the spines in my finger as proof.

I had my last dive of the cruise today at a familiar site called Southwest Reef. As a postdoctoral at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution (HBOI) and the Smithsonian Institution, I worked with Craig Young (then at HBOI, now the Director of the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology [OIMB]) on a variety of projects in the early 1990s. The morning dive (also at Southwest Reef) located a number of cages that I helped construct ca. 15 years ago. With the “wish list” in hand we began the dive at 4 p.m. and descended to about 1700 feet. We traveled over steep hills and dales on the sea floor for nearly 2+ hours with only a few specimens of requested species to show for our efforts (other species that we did not need were, of course, in relatively high abundance). And then we happened upon a herd of Coelopleurus floridanus. C. floridanus is perhaps the most striking species of sea urchin that we have collected (or seen) on this cruise as it has long red and greenish curved spines of almost a foot in length…and it is reproductively active this time of year!

Before the dive, the aft scientist (“Ezzy” Cooper) and I were photographed with the OIMB mascot – Seymour (see the photo below).

To quote the Chief Scientist, “it’s crunch time.” Somebody is working for most of the hours in the day. Tomorrow we will be performing our first feeding experiments with larvae, complete and process two dives, spawn Coelopleurus and all of the sea stars we have collected and stored during the cruise. Egads, there are only two days before we head back to Florida!

Coelopleurus floridanus in the large “bio-box” at the front of the

Johnson-Sea-Link submersible at a depth of ca. 100 feet.

The Johnson-Sea-Link waiting to return to the R/V Seward Johnson

after a completed dive to Southwest Reef.

Erin “Ezzy” Cooper, Seymour, and I before our dive to Southwest Reef.

Seymour and I in the sphere of the Johnson-Sea-Link

before the dive today – he left before we closed the hatch.