Mayday!

Testing out my push cores at the beach.
Sediment inside the tube means it worked!

Friends, it is finally May. There's always something about the start of this month that I find jarring - it's when I snap out of my winter haze and realize that field season is coming. All the things I promised myself I would do over the winter need to be finished ASAP because there are cruises, experiments, and trips to prepare for. Summer draweth nigh. 

I have a hard deadline coming up - a day by which I need to have all my ducks in a row - and to be honest, it feels like the right verb to describe my motion towards that deadline is "plummeting." I am not approaching the deadline, I am not sneaking up on the deadline (nor it on me) - I am plummeting toward the deadline. Uninterrupted free-fall. 

After I finished building my push cores, I tested them in the field and put together an instructional manual to share with my lab members and colleagues. Check - one major piece down. 

My camera system, CATAIN, needed to be recovered so we could download the data and charge the battery. It's a routine we've followed every two months over the last year, but this time, I had to turn the camera around in 24 hours instead of a week. Turns out that is totally possible to do, and CATAIN has been returned to its rightful place at 16 m depth below the WHOI pier - another task done! I'm glad to say we're getting some interesting data, too. More and more species should be settling on the camera as spring goes on.

Barnacles and an anemone on CATAIN

I'm still waiting for the organisms I collected in April to release their larvae so I can the isotope analysis I planned. I've made them warm and comfortable in the lab and can see that some of the adults have egg masses, but for whatever reason, those larvae are taking their sweet old time to develop. Hopefully I will get larvae in time! 

Throughout the summer, my lab is going to have plenty of very interesting field work going on, so stay tuned for stories of our adventures. Hopefully this week of plummeting will mean that the rest of our field season is a smooth glide.