![]() ![]() That is for all marine waters, tropical, temperate and arctic. When people estimate how much there is explored about ‘life in the ocean’ it is not much more than 2%. Q: Is the research you are doing on the ship beneficial? How so? A: We all believe it is. One thing we do in our free time is playing a Ping Pong tournament, which is a lot of fun. Most of the time it is a lot of fun and always interesting. We went through the winds and waves without any problems. Thankfully the ship is very stable and big and the captain and first and second mates that drive the ship are all very good at keeping the ship safe and comfortable. Generally it is fun, but we went through a pretty bad storm on April 22. Q: Is being out at sea scary or fun? A: It can be both. Compare it to land, where there might be fields, or forests or mountains, with different animals living in those different environments. The bottom of the sea is not all the same. Sometimes the species that we see most often are sponges and sea cucumbers. Q: What kind of species most often appear in the nets you bring up after a trawl is completed? A: This really depends where we are. When the tension goes up and the wire is the right length for that depth, we know we have hit the bottom. All of this (the depth, the wire tension, time etc.) is monitored by a computer that we can all look at on board of the ship. The net opening is fixed to a big and very heavy iron frame that keeps the net open and on the bottom. Q: How do you know when the trawling net touches the bottom of the ocean? A: The crew of the ship has done this many times and they are very experienced, so most of the time we ask them! They measure the tension of the wire that the net is attached to. ![]() Whenever we find Porania, we give it a number and photograph it, and we then fix it in chemicals that will preserve the animal so that we can take it back to the museum and sequence it’s DNA. There is a very strong current between Cape Horn at the bottom of South America, and the Antarctic Peninsula, so small animals and larvae from these animals could not swim across, but they might hop from one “underwater island” to another. We are trying to understand how far animals can move in these oceans. Q: What will happen if you find the Porania sea star? Why are you looking for it? A: Thankfully we did find the Porania sea star in a lot of places we looked at, but not everywhere. ![]()
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