Fantastic beasts and where to find them

Recovering the sediment grab. Photo by Marine Ilg.

"So they're currently in alien terrain, surrounded by millions of the most vicious creatures on the planet: Humans."
- Fantastic beasts and where to find them by J.K. Rowling

Recovering the plankton net. Photo by Marine Ilg.

The wind has been calming down over the last few days, so my team and I used the opporunity to go back out on Teisten. We were hoping to sample some stations a little farther away from shore, near the middle of the fjord, so that we could access greater water depths, up to 200 m. The forecast showed calm wind, and the harbor was relatively free of sea ice, so we saw our chance and took it! We had a very productive day on Teisten.

The sampling team with Teisten and the marine lab in the
background. Left to right: me, Marine, Erlend, Xiaoshou,
and Hongju. Not pictured: Sam Laney.

By the end of the day, we had conducted CTD casts, plankton net tows, and sediment grabs at 3 different stations. The mood on board was relaxed and joyful, making for a great day. At one point, as we were recovering the plankton net, I noticed some flashes of blue light coming from inside the net. I peered more closely through the mesh and realized that some of the comb jellies we had collected were creating the flashes. Bioluminescence is the creation of light by a living organism, used mostly as a defense against predators. The comb jellies must have been utterly confused, being torn away from their home environment by an alien species with a giant net. Nevertheless, the blue light created a beautiful glow in the sample jar!

After returning to Ny-Ålesund for dinner, we stayed late at the lab processing all the samples. I took it as my personal task to find all larvae in the zooplankton samples so I could preserve them individually. As you might imagine, there was a lot to go through! We actually got to the point that we were running out of jars to put our samples in. It's not a bad problem to have (because running out means we've been successful at sampling), but it can still be a problem. We found some extras and kept going.

I'm so glad we got another productive day on Teisten and am grateful for our fantastic beasts!