NOAA Teacher at Sea
Dorothy Holley
Aboard NOAA Ship Pisces
July 31 – August 15, 2025
Mission: Northeast Ecosystem Monitoring Survey (EcoMon)
Geographic Area of Cruise: Northwest Atlantic Ocean
Date: August 2, 2025
Weather Data from Bridge:
Latitude: N41o30’0’’
Longitude: W67o17’0’’
Sea Wave height: 8 feet waves
Wind speed: 13 kt
Wind Direction: 40o SW
Visibility: overcast
Air Temperature: 20.oC
Barometric Pressure: 30.22 inHg
Sky: gray to clear
Photos: NOAA Ship Pisces in port in Newport, Rhode Island; NOAA Ship Pisces’ call sign; Teacher at Sea Dorothy Holley and NOAA Ship Pisces.
Science at Sea
When someone I care about tells me they don’t feel so good, the first thing I want to do is put the back of my hand to their forehead. Do you have a temperature? If so, your body is probably fighting off something. A thermometer can give a more quantitative answer. With more precise data, I can best treat the underlying cause.
Photos: Bongo nets on deck, awaiting deployment; Ed Williams and Alyssa Rauscher deploying the bongo nets; Pulling the nets back on board. Photos by LT Karina Urquhart
NOAA scientists help us take the temperature of our oceans by monitoring plankton – the base of the marine food web. I’m not talking about sticking tiny thermometers into copepods or krill, I’m talking about measuring plankton abundance and composition over time. NOAA collects plankton data four times each year – summer, fall, winter, and spring. With over four decades of plankton data, NOAA scientists are able to help fisheries make informed decisions to maximize production as well as protect vulnerable species.
Our team uses Bongo nets to collect plankton on this NOAA Summer Ecosystem Monitoring cruise. We will make over 100 (I think there are about 160 planned stations but we probably won’t have time to get to all of them) stops from Cape Hatteras to the Gulf of Maine, collecting samples that will later be sorted and catalogued. (For a more detailed description of Bongos, see Teacher at Sea Tonya Prentice’s blog here)
You do the math: If we are out at sea for two weeks, and deploy the Bongo nets at 100 different stops, how many times does each group need to collect plankton from the Bongo nets each day? Check in the next bog post for the answer.
Interesting Things: I am surprised by the ways I have been prepared for life on a NOAA ship by classroom life in a public school. The chairs all come with tennis balls on the bottom. In my classroom, we put tennis balls on the chairs so that they don’t make loud noises or create as many scuffs on the floor. Why do you think we have tennis balls on the chairs on a NOAA ship?
Career Spotlight
Amanda Jacobsen is our Science Field Party Chief. She works in the NOAA Fisheries lab in Rhode Island, and sails on NOAA cruises like this one. She grew up in Connecticut and attended a small, liberal arts school, Connecticut College. While there, Amanda took a broad spectrum of science courses including Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Environmental Science, and even Environmental Law. Her degree in Environmental Studies helps her understand the many impacts on Marine Ecosystems.
Amanda is now a full-time NOAA scientist and a part time graduate student, studying to earn a Master’s degree in Marine Biology from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Her thesis examines the energy of plankton in the food chain. (Alert: we will do bomb calorimetry labs next year with Amanda’s data!) Better understanding the bottom layer of the energy pyramid is important to harvesting all of the tropic levels above it. If you like eating fish or even fish sticks, you will benefit from Amanda’s work because plankton provides food for nearly every creature in the ocean either directly or indirectly!
One tool that Amanda can’t live without is the Katy Clip (shout out to NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow survey technician Katy McGinnis!). The Katy Clip helps us wash down the Bongo nets when collecting plankton.
Amanda is currently reading the Red Rising Series by Pierce Brown. She also recommends The Ocean’s Menagerie by Drew Harvell. Amanda enjoys doing just about anything as long as it is outside. I am glad she is helping take the temperature of our oceans so that we might enjoy fishing for many years to come!
Personal Log
The ship is going 24/7, so the scientist are, too! Our team is divided into two groups – one that works 3 am – 3 pm and the other works 3 pm- 3 am. Amanda, Miles and I are in the second group. We get to see the sunset every day, but I probably won’t make it to breakfast!
