NOT! The trawl was actually extremely full! I could not believe my eyes this morning when I went into the dry lab and saw the numerous bins full of corals.
The trawl had just come into the boat was being emptied into big plastic bins. There is so much stuff!
Also, the wet lab still had many more buckets that still needed to be cleaned off and sorted. They hit the corals jackpot! Laura and Rhian were so excited that the trawl had brought up so many alive and fossilized corals. Also, in the trawl were numerous sponges that Kate was happy to collect for her research.
A variety of different sponge species were collected. Kate and Laura were labeling and bagging them based on their physical characteristics.
I helped out by sorting the smaller corals into 3 different species. Tina showed me the basic ways to identify the 3 different species according to their particular physical properties, and then it was fun to help out and get my hands dirty.
Laura and Tina are telling me all kinds of cool information about the fossilized corals.
Laura and Rhian had planned another trawl but the wind became very strong, up to 50 knots at one point, so that was postponed for today. It was decided to start our 3-day transit to the central Scotia Sea for some geophysics. The Corals Group will continue to sort and analyze their collected species, but now our group from the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics will start doing their main research. We will start tomorrow by collecting seismic data as we travel to our first dredge sight in the central Scotia Sea. Tomorrow I will also be trained for "marine mammal watch,” which is basically whale watching. I hope I get to see something interesting during my watch!