Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 09/18/2011 - 16:59

Hello Mike. Again, amazing journals & videos. Hearing the vocalizations of the seals was wonderful & if you can convince your videographer (?Adam?) seeing them would be truly magnificent!!!

Your journal started with stating that you would be doing surface supply dives to collect sediment; however, watching the video, you did not appear to be in surface supply gear . . . ? Am I visualizing incorrectly?

Secondly, are all of your sediment / worm collections done from shallow sediment as seen on the video? Or do you dig down further to ascertain differences in worms at differing levels of sediment?

Finally, the worm lab . . . is the water pumped in from the sound temperature controlled so that it matches the outdoor environment? I would think that being in an enclosed building would alter the ambient temperature of the water.

So happy to see Theodore has a compadre. Hello to both Theodore & Ms. W.

Tina

Michael League

Tina,Great questions.
1) I'm working on some seal video. Stay tuned. I won't give up until
we have some good footage.
2) You caught us! We can't video surface supply collections because we
can only deploy one diver at a time. I did that collection on SCUBA to
collect a different worm (one that we can collect on SCUBA) and Adam did
the video. Essentially, surface supply collections look the same, but
we have the helmet on instead.
3) What you saw was pretty representative of what we collect in terms of
depth. Too deep into the sediment and it is too compacted for the worms
to get down. They are usually found in the top few inches.
4) The water is pumped up from McMurdo Sound and the Aquarium room is
not all that warm. The water flows through the tanks and then drains
back out to the Sound. We keep thermometers in all the tanks constantly
monitoring the temperature to make sure it's just like the ocean water
under the ice.
Thanks for the great questions (and for following along)!
Mike