A day on the Rumline

This week has been exceptionally sunny and calm for a March in Bermuda and so, determined not to let it go to waste, we decided to head out on BIOS’s dive boat, the Rumline, to do a little pilot sampling to test methods ahead of my first cruise aboard the R/V Atlantic Explorer later this weekend. The boat was heading out anyway with a group of undergraduates here for a ‘spring semester’, so another member of Team Microbe and I tagged along, carboys and cool boxes (for sample collection, of course) in hand.

Postdoctoral Researcher Dr Brett Jameson teaching the students some oceanography 101.

We first headed out to hourglass reef, so called for its unique shape when viewed from above, so that the students might do some sampling for their Coral Reef Ecology course. They were laying transects (with a tape measure) and imaging the corals along it. This meant a late morning of snorkelling for the rest of us, and we even caught dinner! Lionfish are an invasive fish species in Bermuda, so hunting them is encouraged, and helpful for the local ecosystem. They’re caught using a special three-prong paralyser spear tip, and are, unluckily for them (but luckily for us), delicious on a barbeque.

Brett with our supper!

After we’d dried off, we headed out to deeper water to do some oceanographic sampling. We targeted 4 sites at different distances out from BIOS, to see a gradient in ocean conditions as we sampled further and further from shore. The students learned how to do a simple surface zooplankton tow using a net, and how to prep, deploy, and sample a Niskin bottle for seawater for nutrients. I really loved watching them be exposed to these sorts of techniques at this stage in their career, it’s something I missed out on having not done a degree in marine biology or oceanography, so it was nice to see it through their eyes.

We finished the day with a spot of whale watching and were duly rewarded with a sighting of a pod of migratory humpbacks. They breached and put their flukes up for us. It was an exceptional end to a lovely day on the water.