November 20th

Craig Lewis

We're back to the routine diving here, although with new sites and new missions. Not as much sieving and shoveling now, as the weather is getting warmer, but many new sites and more diving. Since the New Harbor trip we've been able to look around a lot more.

Today's morning dive was at Hut Point, where Paul Dayton left another set of cages and settling arrays for posterity. I set out on the animal collection trip, being tasked to collect one urchin, sea star, fish, nermertean worm, laturnula clam, two types of sponge. Other than the fish, it's a pretty easy collection, and even the fish only requires a little dexterity to get one to swim into the bag. Jonna swam around measuring Cnemidocarpa in order to complete a study begun several years before. Stacy and Jennifer, meanwhile, were floating around farther down the slope, taking video and still pictures of Paul's installations.

The outfall pipe.

In the afternoon Rob and Stacy went out to the outfall site to collect more of the slime that grows on the sewage pile and install a time lapse camera to watch some experiments they'd placed there earlier. As this dive requires a fully enclosed hard-hat rather than simple SCUBA, the rest of us remained perfectly pleased that we were NOT certified to dive with such equipment.
The profusion of life at the boundary of the pile of sewage waste, stopping right at the Beggiatoa mats.

We took off to maintain the S4 hole, conversing with the resident seal there. As far as we can tell, one seal has established that hole as his new home, and always comes to visit us several times while we are there. He hasn't brought us anymore fish since the Skuas absconded with the first presents he brought us. He does a good job of preventing the hole from freezing solid, as our instruments are about the same size as his head when he comes up to breath. Most of our holes show at least some signs of a seal using them for a few days, and we have a suspicion they actually recognize the sound of our drill and come looking for the new hole.

A seal camped out in his hole. We use it by his suffrage.