CTD's along the Strawberry Hill Hydroline (9/10/09)

The scientific crew of CMOP's Fall 2009 New Horizon cruise. Adena Kass, Michelle Maier, Pete Kahl, Vikki Campbell, Matt Wolhowe, Natalja Kuvaldina, Justin Reina, Tawnya Peterson, Colleen Durkin, Sara Bender, Yolanda Morales, Grant Law, Morgaine McKibben, Josh Manger, Missy Gilbert, and Patrick Prahl (not pictured: Caroline Fortunado and Fred Prahl)

For our last day out we got a surprising amount of work in. Dropping CTD's along the Strawberry Hill Hydroline so fast, that we had time to sample a few extra stations on the Haceta Bank Hydroline. Even had a deep water drop at night, but we weren't successful in luring up any fabulous creatures.

Grant enjoys the view from the bridge deck

I spent a bit of time birdwatching today, trying to sort out the fulmars from the shearwaters and all. We saw several cute birds this morning that I was unable to id. It was very foggy and cold, and I kept hearing a lovely, short, robin-like warble. The culprit was something that looked like a murre, but a bit larger, with a long neck, and a white belly that extended up along the underside of the neck. Any ideas?

I finally found the best spot to watch the ocean from: a plastic seat up next to the bridge. Too bad it took me this long to find it. Apparently, that's the place to be. They've been seeing sharks, and mola mola's from up there. I'm told the ship almost collided with a humpback whale today, and the only people who saw it were on the bridge. Next time I'll know where to go on my off-hours.

Pacific white-sided dolphin trying desperately to ride our meager bow-wave before leaving in disgust to try the ship behind us.

Yay! We finally have photos of dolphins to share! Unfortunately I missed this pod of pacific white-sided dolphin, so I have no story to tell. But lucky for us Morgaine grabbed her fancy camera and took a ton of photos, a few of which she offered to share. I wish I had been there to say farewell!

Tomorrow morning we will be docking at OSU's maritime operations dock in Yaquina Bay. At 7:30 we will begin off-loading the ship, and by noon, headed for home. In preparation, we've been packing and cleaning madly. All day long we've been noticing all the things we are going to miss -- dancing back and forth when moving across the deck, staring into the depths, enjoying the albatross' effortless glide, deploying and recovering the CTD carouselle, and a thousand other little things. However, I think we are all ready to return to the comforts of home, and our friends and family. Just a few more hours...


Sara and Colleen pack their gear like the seasoned veterans they are.



Missy gets a little goofy during the tearing down process, but doesn't actually break into swing-dancing.