NOAA Teacher at Sea
Aboard NOAA Ship Pisces
May 31- June 10
Mission: Northeast Ecosystem Monitoring Survey (EcoMon) Geographic Area of Cruise: Mid-Atlantic Date: June 4, 2026
Data from the Bridge
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT): 8:24 AM Latitude: 39° 02.599’ N Longitude: 072° 42.161’ W Doppler Wind Speed: 9.97 knots (kt) True Wind Speed: 3.56 knots (kt) Wave Height: 2’ Air Temperature: 15.556°C/60°F Wet Bulb Temperature: 14.5°C/58.2°F Bottom Depth: 287 m Sky: Clear
My Office View
(photo courtesy of York High School)
We are well into our cruise and have been sampling around the Mid-Atlantic today. Each morning, >clears throat<….at 3 am, I can plan my day from my office window. Luckily, there is high-tech navigational equipment that lets me view my Time To Go (TTG) for the upcoming station and the Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA), since I already understand coordinates and navigation. My students, however, get to label a blank map to illustrate understanding of coordinates when they complete the Duck Current lab.
The first of the drifters has been deployed, YORKYO DRIFT, at coordinates 39°50.206’N 70°35.161’W! Shout out, YHS Class of 2026, congratulations!
These are geographic coordinates in the electronic format used by maritime digital equipment. They tell you exactly where a place is on Earth using two measurements:
- Latitude (39°50.206’ N)
- Think of latitude like the horizontal lines on a globe (like rings around a ball).
- 39° (degrees) → how far north you are from the Equator
- 50.206’ (minutes) → a more precise measurement within that degree
- N → means North of the Equator
- Longitude (70°35.161’ W)
- Longitude lines run up and down from pole to pole.
- 70° (degrees) → how far west you are from the Prime Meridian
- 35.161’ (minutes) → extra precision
- W → means West of the Prime Meridian
Science and Technology Log
Research
Photo from chief scientist Audy Peoples.
Although our focus is on areas where Atlantic Mackerel have historically been, the featured fish for this day of sampling is the monkfish. This is due to the fact that the ocean had not yet produced any larvae large enough to be distinguishable in a photo. Your Atlantic Mack girl really said no paparazzi today! Refer back to the last blog about the expert scientist in Poland identifying fish larvae.
The U.S. commercial monkfish fishery spans the Gulf of Maine to the Mid-Atlantic, extending to the continental shelf edge. Female monkfish produce large, ribbon-like egg veils that can contain over one million eggs. These veils drift near the ocean surface with prevailing currents for one to three weeks, depending on temperature, before breaking apart and releasing the developing larvae. Commercial fishing for these fish, like many species, can often result in bycatch. Trawl gear is primarily used in northern waters, while gillnets dominate in the south. Because monkfish are often caught alongside groundfish, this fishery is closely linked to the Northeast multispecies fishery. Management relies on days-at-sea limits and trip caps to ensure sustainability. There is no targeted recreational fishery and monkfish are harvested for human consumption. U.S. wild-caught monkfish is a sustainable seafood choice, supported by strict federal management and responsible harvesting practices.
Another surprise in the zooplankton samples that wanted a photo opportunity was a larval squid. The organisms found in the bongo are mostly classified as plankton. Many of you might recall that organisms that cannot swim freely against the current are considered plankton. This is the reason they appear in the bongo; most organisms that have advanced far enough in their juvenile development have the ability to swim out of the nets.
Juvenile Squid From 150 m Sample
(photo courtesy of York High School)
Scientific Concepts
Most of you are already aware that when it comes to fish reproduction, it is a numbers game. Some of you remember that fish are an example of an r- strategist life history type. In general, r-selected species have short lifespans and produce many offspring that require little or no parental care, unlike the k-strategists these students were mimicking.
Scientists can now model and predict growth, survival and reproductive patterns across fish species. A species’ life history strategy reflects the specific combination of traits it has evolved to thrive in its environment and ecological niche. Using a framework of traits, including size, growth rate, reproduction, lifespan and parental care, researchers have classified more than 34,000 fish species into three primary strategy types.
Fish Life Cycle
- Egg Stage
- From spawning → hatching
- Eggs vary in size, shape, and color depending on the species.
- Inside the egg, an embryo develops.
- Scientists identify eggs by observing:
- Egg size and shape
- The yolk (food supply)
- Embryo development
- Yolk-Sac Stage
- From hatching → yolk used up
- Newly hatched fish are called larvae.
- They carry a yolk sac that provides food.
- Some species skip this stage and hatch more developed.
Right: adult lantern fish. Photo from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
(Creature Feature: Lanternfishes/)
- Preflexion Stage (featured in the Mychtophidae larvae above)
- After yolk is gone → tail begins bending
- Larvae begin feeding on their own.
- Scientists observe:
- Body shape
- Early fin development (you can see the fin begin to develop in the Mychotophidae above)
- Color patterns (you can see the color begin to develop in the Mychotophidae above)
- Flexion Stage
- The tail (notochord) bends upward. The tail fin starts forming.
- Postflexion Stage
- Tail fully formed → before metamorphosis
- Fins and body features continue developing.
- It becomes easier to identify the species.
- Transformation Stage
- The fish changes from larva to juvenile.
- Changes may include:
- Body shape
- Color patterns
- Fin position
- Development of scales
- Juvenile Stage
- Young fish → adulthood
- The fish looks like a small adult. This stage ends when the fish can reproduce.
Methodology
Plankton span an extraordinary size range, from just a few micrometers to several centimeters or more. In general, phytoplankton (plant-like organisms) are the smallest, while zooplankton tend to be larger, though both groups exhibit variability in size. What may appear as minor differences to the human eye often translate into significant biological contrasts; for instance, a cylindrical organism measuring 3 mm in length has approximately 27 times the body volume of a similar organism measuring 1 mm. At each station, we conduct a double oblique tow with a bongo net diameter suitable for capturing zooplankton. Sometimes we end up with a large quantity of big zooplankton like these Mauve Jellyfish.
Plankton nets are designed to sample large volumes of water, concentrating organisms into a manageable sample size for analysis. Although plankton are often highly abundant, collecting a representative sample, particularly for less common species, requires filtering large volumes of seawater.
By equipping nets with flowmeters, researchers can accurately estimate the volume of water passing through the net. This enables plankton counts to be standardized as a concentration per unit volume. For example, if 200 organisms are collected from a tow that filtered 2 cubic meters of seawater, the resulting concentration is 100 organisms per cubic meter. Standardizing measurements in this way allows for equivalent comparisons across samples, even when the filtered volumes differ.
Careers
Katey Marancik studies the ecology of ichthyoplankton collected through long-term monitoring programs on the Northeast U.S. shelf. She earned a B.S. in marine biology at the University of North Carolina (UNC) and her M.S. in biology at East Carolina University (ECU). Her work focuses on improving larval fish identification through refined taxonomic descriptions, as well as examining patterns in abundance, distribution and environmental relationships.
In addition to her research, Katey is a published scientist who uses visual communication as a tool to make scientific concepts clearer and more accessible to both specialized and broader audiences. Some of her illustrations of Hake have been published to update the morphological descriptions of the larval stage in the Northeast United States Continental Shelf. The work she does reinforces the value of the natural sciences and real-world observations. The analysis and coordination of ichthyoplankton sampling adds validity to the digital sampling of water quality parameters conducted during ecosystem monitoring surveys. In a world of high tech and AI, be a natural scientist. Katey is truly an environmental steward of our oceans.
Personal Log
Some mornings, I immediately have to put on my foul-weather gear and head out onto the deck because the ship is stopped at one of our sampling stations. Other mornings, I grab a coffee and open my computer to blog. But regardless of how my shift begins, I get to see the first light of day around 4:15 am, and I feel as though I could quite literally seize the day! Watching the sun rise is just something special, an unused part of the day just for yourself. On my usual morning commute across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, I often wish to just stop and watch the day begin.
1 & 2- Foul Weather Gear that I don about 8 times a day. 3 – The wet lab. 4 – Beautiful sunrise on stern. 5 – My Emergency Billet Locations.
We participate in safety drills on the ship just like we do when we are in school, except… one is called “Man Overboard”! For that drill, we have to go to the top level of the ship, called the Fly Bridge, and point to the person we see in the water. Unless we can spot the person before the Fly Bridge, in which case we stay and point and yell “man overboard.”
Did You Know?
NOAA vessel discharges are governed by EPA Vessel Incidental Discharge Act (VIDA) regulations and international MARPOL standards, with requirements determined by proximity to shore. On this sail date we had sampling stations closer inshore and the NOAA Ship Pisces had to follow different discharge plans based on our locations.
Inshore (< 3 NM): Discharge controls are most restrictive within U.S. state waters. Untreated sewage (blackwater) is prohibited and must be processed through an approved Marine Sanitation Device (MSD) or retained in holding tanks. Graywater discharge is tightly limited and, in some sanctuary areas, fully prohibited. Additional protections apply in marine protected areas; for example, both treated and untreated blackwater discharges are banned within 12 nautical miles of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
Offshore (> 3 NM): Regulations allow greater flexibility but remain controlled. Treated sewage may be discharged using an approved MSD, while untreated sewage is only permitted beyond 12 nautical miles from land. Graywater discharge (excluding toilet & kitchen is generally allowed in open waters beyond 3 nautical miles. Food waste must be macerated to less than one inch and discharged outside 3 nautical miles; unprocessed waste is restricted to distances greater than 12 nautical miles.
https://www.epa.gov/vessels-marinas-and-ports/vessel-incidental-discharge-act-vida
