NOAA Teacher At Sea: Thomas Ward
Aboard NOAA Ship Miller Freeman
Mission: Fisheries Surveys
Geographical Area of Cruise: Eastern Bering Sea
Date: September 18, 2010
More Questions, Cool
In this blog I will make an attempt to answer more of the questions I have been receiving.
The Ship, The Miller Freeman. She was commissioned in 1967, is 215 feet long and was built to be a scientific research vessel. http://www.moc.noaa.gov/mf/
Once we catch the fish, which is only done using the beam trawl, the winch pulls them on board. Because of the size of the net and the limited time that we are pulling it, the catch is not too large. The catch can then be lifted by hand into the kiddie pool and sorted. If the catch happens to be a little heavy, one of the cranes picks it up and dumps it onto the sorting table for all of us to gather around and do our thing. The juveniles that are of importance to this study are bagged and labeled, then frozen. They will be studied back at the lab in Seattle, at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, AFSC.
Each of the three methods used have a different purpose and the only method that actually catches fish is the beam trawl.
The different species are sorted, measured and weighed. The juveniles are kept and the larger ones are weighed, counted, and returned to the sea. Last night we caught over 100 yellowfin sole in one haul.
The research study that I am part of, the FOCI study, is a very active group. There is currently a group in the Arctic and another cruise just ended before we started.
There are 24 crew members on board and 10 scientists.
For me the down time has been mainly in front of the computer, doing this blog and other school work. There is a lounge with a TV. movies and TV series box sets available for people to watch. The catalog of movies that they have is extensive. There is also a small exercise room and a small library. Of course there are computers around the ship which have access to the internet.
We have not found any “new or different kind of species” There is occasion though when sorting through the beam trawl haul an usual critter gets spotted, the scientist get very excited. For that matter, everyone else does too. It is similar to saying that laughter is contagious, so is the excitement of finding something that is rare.
