NOAA Teacher at Sea
Kiersten Newtoff
Aboard NOAA Ship Pisces
January 6 – January 29, 2025
Mission: Atlantic Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species (AMAPPS)
Geographic Area of Cruise: North Atlantic Coast
Date: January 10, 2025
Current Location: 37° 35.83 N, 73° 39.83 W (you can follow us at Windy in real time!)
Weather from the Bridge: Waves are 3-5ft, 42°F, wind speed of 15.8kn, and we are traveling 9.9knph.
What is Zooplankton?
If you ask someone what their favorite marine animal is, I guarantee it’s either dolphins, whales, turtles, or sharks. And honestly, you can’t really blame them. The term charismatic megafauna exists for a reason. Fortunately, these animals have used their charisma to inspire us to protect them and their habitat. While they have been great stewards for conservation, they don’t tell the whole story of what’s happening in the ecosystem.
While some of the research groups on the Pisces are focused on marine mammals and seabirds, The Bongonauts focus on zooplankton. Plankton just refers to any organism in the water that can’t swim against a current and ‘floats’ in the water column. You can then further split plankton into animal-like (zooplankton) or plant-like (phytoplankton). The marine food chain starts with phytoplankton, which get consumed by zooplankton, which might get directly eaten by a baleen whale, like humpbacks. Zooplankton may also get eaten by small fishes then larger fish that eventually are consumed by toothed whales. Identifying and quantifying the abundance of zooplankton helps us to understand the health of the food chain. There really aren’t any “Save the Zooplankton” movements happening because let’s be honest, it’s hard to get people to like microscopic organisms. But their downfall due to changes in ocean temperature, salinity, and currents will permeate to the top of the food chain of whales, dolphins, and other megafauna. If we wish to protect the ‘cute’ species, we need to protect their food too!
Let’s Get Ready to Bongo!
Here enters the bongo. If you’ve played Donkey Kong, then you already know what a bongo is. A bongo is a set of two drums that are connected in the middle. In the marine world, what we do is beat on this drum set on the side of the boat and collect all the zooplankton that jump out of the water into collection buckets.
………………………..
Just kidding! But that would be cool.
Although we don’t have the musical bongo, we do have a plankton bongo! It was so named because there are two frames connected in the middle supporting the two plankton nets, kind of like a bongo drum. The nets are made of a mesh with openings that are 1/3 mm. As the nets travel in the water, the water can move through the mesh but larger organisms like zooplankton can’t. Part of the bongo apparatus is the CTD, which uses a series of sensors to measure conductivity, temperature, and depth. These oceanographic variables can help to explain the zooplankton communities we see.
Bongo time is during the evening and is deployed in the same general areas as the cetacean observations earlier in the day. This allows the scientists to make correlations between plankton communities and the cetaceans spotted earlier. We release the bongos in the evening as the speed needed for a successful deployment is around 3 knots, whereas the observation teams need to be at a minimum of 8 knots. Also, many zooplankton undergo a diel vertical migration (move upwards) in the evening, making it more likely to get a representative sample of zooplankton from the entire water column.
Bongos, a Haiku
gliding through water
collect plankton by bongo
hopefully, cool things
Meet the Bongonauts
On this cruise, Amanda and Lily make up the zooplankton team. Amanda is a Biological Science Technician and has been working with NOAA since 2018. During her undergraduate studies, she spent a semester abroad focused on marine science. As soon as she finished, she immediately began looking for marine jobs. Her first position was with NOAA focusing on commercial fisheries. A few years later in 2021, her contracting company had another position within NOAA that she switched to and started focusing on zooplankton. One of the coolest things she’s seen in a bongo net was a strawberry squid, but don’t worry, it was promptly returned to the seas. She enjoys working with other groups on the science team to see what they are finding, and every time the nets come up there is excitement over what they may contain.
Lily is currently a sophomore at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. The professor in one of her classes shared with her the opportunity to sail with the Pisces to volunteer on the zooplankton team and she took it up! Her future career goal is to understand the environmental impacts of cruise ships in port. Further along the line, she would like to get a Master’s in Library Science and be a children’s librarian. She chose Mass Maritime for their marine science program; other schools with similar programs were out of state or prohibitively expensive, but she feels like she’s made the right choice. Of all the things she’s told me, Mass Maritime seems really cool and gives lots of hands-on experience to their students.
Advice for Students
Amanda and Lily shared some of their insights for students who may want to work for NOAA some day.
- Look for jobs on Indeed and LinkedIn. If you are already working with a company, see if they have other positions that you might like.
- If you’re interested in marine science, go to a school that specializes in it. Avoid institutions that have it as a small program or just a minor, as you likely won’t be getting nearly as much hands-on experience as a school dedicated to it.
- Keep your opportunities open – you might think you like Marine Science now but that may change as you do field work.
- Even if an opportunity comes up that is not related to marine science, do things to give you any sort of field experience.
- You can volunteer with NOAA! There are lots of programs to explore.
