Pacific scouting expedition

Amy here reporting in on the next development in our research project. I was awarded a fantastic opportunity to be part of a training expedition called the UNOLS Early Career Investigator Oceanographic Research Cruise Training Program. The goals of this program are to teach new scientists, post-docs and graduate students the ins and outs of planning for and leading a research cruise. As part of the course, 14 beginning scientists from a number of different disciplines are working together to coordinate and execute a 7-day cruise leaving from Newport Oregon on the R/V Wecoma. Our research objectives range from testing out new sensor equipment, to bottom core sampling, to midwater trawling for invertebrates.

Photo by: Paul Suprenand

I, of course, am looking for pteropods. This expedition is giving me a change to get some preliminary ideas about what species of pteropods we can expect to find next year during the Pacific section of our Ocean Acidification project. Similar to our Oceanus voyage, I will be gathering pteropods from the surface waters at night, identifying them, and doing physiology experiments to see how they respond to elevated CO2 conditions. I am also bringing home as many species as I can to start assessing how different the populations are between the Atlantic and Pacific. If you want to see more on the different projects or find out what we have been learning about the process of putting together a research cruise please feel free to follow us on: http://csw.unols.org/ Ship location can be found at http://webcam.oregonstate.edu/wecoma/