7/17/2013-Departure Day

We got up in the morning & met to go over our roles for the trip. Zeb walked me through what I would be doing with the video cameras. When these locations are sampled, one chevron trap is deployed at each location. It is baited with menhaden & two video cameras are secured on top of the traps. My job is to prepare all of the video cameras to go onto the traps & then make sure that all of the data comes back off of the cameras & gets backed up on 2TB hard drives.

The two types of cameras are Canon Camcorders in underwater housings & GoPro cameras set to record video. The big canon camera is facing over the mouth of the trap, while the GoPro is secured facing the other way. The reason the researchers want two cameras is so that they can get some idea of the habitat present in multiple directions.

We left the dock at 1400 (2pm) & motored out of the Navy yard at Mayport. Much different from Tampa Bay, we sailed out of the yard, into the channel between the jetties & were able to see blue water within 20 minutes. There was a very distinctive tide line right near the edge of the channel. The St. John’s River meets the Atlantic at Jacksonville.  All of its muddy, fresh water dumps out into the ocean at this one point. The fresh water creates a lens on top of the salty water of the ocean, which you can see as a very distinct line on the top of the ocean. It’s quite remarkable.

This was another fairly low-key day. Mostly getting off the dock, getting accustomed to the ship & setting up our work stations. I set up all of my video cameras so they are ready to be put in the water tomorrow morning. The seas are fairly flat, so the scientists set up a cornhole game in the middle of the back deck. In part, the folks on the night crew are trying to stay up late so that they can work all night tomorrow night. But, several of us were getting into it. Apparently last cruise, there was a very serious cornhole tournament with brackets and everything. We’ll see what happens this time.

Right now we are steaming toward our first sampling area about 75 miles off of Savannah, Georgia. Tomorrow we begin setting gear. I’m excited to see what we catch. We are going to some areas that aren’t well known, so it is always interesting to find out what type of habitats & fish we find!