The lengths detritophiles will go
There was a time when the only gear you needed to answer all the pressing kelp-related questions was a scuba tank, a quadrat, flagging tape, and an unreasonable amount of cable ties. Times are changing and WP3 is definitely upping their equipment game.
Our second leg of the cruise began with 4 hours on the dock unpacking and assembling the time lapse camera system!
Good thing we had our NIVA expert Medyan to help us get it up and running. Also, while we were unpacking Eva found her wool socks. She had packed them with the Gemini core! Classic deep sea biologist move.
Our first task was to deploy the time lapse camera at the deep kelp area to record the community response to a fall of kelp. No easy job in today's ocean swell.
The camera system is very cool. It free falls to 400 m depth, settles on the sea floor, and takes pictures of a baited tray every 5 minutes. After 30 hours we will position the ship over camera and trigger an acoustic release. This drops the weights chained to the frame and it floats back up to the surface.
It’s in the water! Now the drama will be getting it back up.
