Before we delve in, we must recap the events of last night. Chelsea, Ryan, and Adrienne took a chance at some night fishing under the full moonlit seas. While they didn’t catch anything, it was a great night to see some "floating squid", as John put it, at the surface of the waters. Pods of squid are attracted to the light of the full moon and we’ve heard they can be seen swimming figure eights and circles around boats. Just as we thought we weren’t going see anything, a pod of small squid appeared out of nowhere at the surface of the water and vanished almost instantly, like lightening. We were all very excited!
As for today’s events, we had quite a bit more work to do than yesterday with five trawls spanning the afternoon. We woke up early, fully refreshed from the deepest sleep imaginable provided by a rocking boat. Today’s trawls ranged from 45m to 260m, and all came up with a wide abundance of fish and invertebrates. New species to add to the list included a massive California king crab (with a huge red parasite), a few gigantic green-blotched rockfish, tons of shrimp ("Earl on my scriiimmmp"), crazy deep sea shhhnails, and THOUSANDS OF FLATFISH…And brittle stars.
We travelled from our anchorage at Smugglers Cove, Santa Cruz Island, northward towards Santa Barbara Harbor, where we are currently anchored. We’ve so far enjoyed a gorgeous sunset and a huge bright orange rising moon while eating yet another delicious dinner prepared by Chef Rogan.
Even more highlights of the day:
· Ryan got his workout in (Phew!) and his 5,000 calories (Thank god!)
· No one drank Adrienne’s beer
· We got the nicest hot showers in Santa Barbara Harbor
· We got the most attractive forearm tans from full body coverage with rolled up sleeves
· We discovered a swimming pool occupied entirely by birds (There were no lifeguards on duty)
· More cookies
-Morgan Winston '14, Adrienne Mikovari '14, and Ryan Stokes '14
