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A cyprid larva Alex caught

I was working on my laptop in my room when Alex showed up. She tapped her knuckles on the open door to get my attention. "Kirstin," she said, "I've just done a net tow and have some larvae in my sample. Do you want them?"

Do I want them? Absolutely, I want them! I want every larva I can lay my hot little fingers on. I want to filter the entire Fram Strait!

That's what I thought, but it's not how I responded. I did my best to contain my enthusiasm and agreed to meet Alex in the lab. You see, she's a phytoplankton biologist, and part of her research at sea involves collecting samples with plankton nets. At every station, Alex lowers a fine mesh net into the water and then examines the contents under a microscope in her lab. Her first sample contained 6 individuals belonging to 3 different species – a baby barnacle, anemone, and sea urchin. She had recognized the echinopluteus (sea urchin larva) as something I might be interested in and agreed to let me have them.

This is one of the reasons I love being at sea – the connections made between scientists. There is so much power in being present, being truly, physically present, on a ship together in the habitat you're studying. At sea, you get to know each other quickly because you're spending every second together. You learn to trust one another because that's the only way you can make it through. It is impossible to build social capital like this in a virtual environment – there is just no substitute.

A pluteus larva Alex caught

I am extremely grateful to Alex for sharing her sample. It took Kharis 

and me a good 3 hours to look through all the water she gave us, photograph the larvae, and preserve them. This actually served as a good practice run for us, because hopefully (fingers crossed, toes crossed, everything crossed) we'll get many more larvae as soon as our first lander comes back.

It turns out Alex is planning a similar net tow at every station we visit. She agreed that Kharis and I could look through the water after she had completed her processing, and I'm really looking forward to adding these surface larvae to our dataset!