The last couple of days have been crazy busy- so sorry that the blog has not been updated! We each work twelve hour shifts, and there usually are breaks in between the stations such as the thirty minute trawl time. However, yesterday the stations were so closely packed together that we were on our feet for around seven straight hours- hauling in trawls, going through our catches, CTD's, etc. My feet were about to fall off- I can't remember the last time I worked that hard. Probably never...doing all of that labor. Even though it was exhausting and strenuous, we had a good time and made the best of it. We finally were able to turn on XM satellite radio- so we have been jamming to the 80's and 90's for the past couple of days.

Every time we pull up our trawl, it's always a surprise to see what kind of catch we have in the net. Since this cruise is mainly for monitoring the commerical shrimp and red snapper populations, we get A LOT of shrimp, but also a lot of other really interesting species. And we also get a ton..I mean a ton of crabs. When the deckhands haul up the net, we bring it over to dump it into baskets for us to weigh and carry them back into the dry lab. Sometimes when the catch is extremely large like 100 + kilos, we will dump it on the conveyor belt outside, which will bring it into the wet lab. We all stand around the belt, picking out all of the shrimp, red snapper, and any other unusual species. Therefore, we don't always measure and count everything we caught in the trawl. Depending on the weight of the entire catch, our watch leader will take only half, a third, or even a fourth of the catch. From there we will meticilously pick out every species into different allotted baskets and count each organism. Before we start weighing and measuring each individual, we have to enter everything into the computer. After an hour or two when everything is accounted for, we dump the catch and prepare for the next trawl. For the most part we try to keep all of the commercial shrimp, pretty much just browns and whites. In every catch we will at least get 200 shrimp- some catches almost 2,000, and others are in the low hundreds. Needless to say, it's alot of shrimp to count and measure and weigh. I have also become a pro at de-heading the shrimp as well. It would be such a waste to throw thousands of dead shrimp back into the water, so we usually try to save and freeze most of them. Often, the deckhands, engineers, and cook crew will come out at the end of each trawl to help pack up the shrimp. Most of it is saved for the crew to freeze and bring back home, but we have dined on some delicious shrimp in gumbo, etouffe, and just boiled shrimp in the galley. Although, I don't think I will be able to eat shrimp for a while since I am surrounded by them all day long.

Let's see...any crazy things that we have caught so far on the trip. A couple of sharks (dogfish...not great whites!), lots of stingrays, cow rays, skates, a sea turtle (which they quickly took out and set free), hundreds of different types of fish such as red snapper, mahi mahi, butter fish, puffer fish etc., blue crabs and other crabs galore, scallops, tons of shrimp, sponges, sargassum, and the list goes on. I asked some of the NOAA scientists the craziest things they ever caught while trawling, and everyone responded with kilos of cocaine. Apparently, one day during a trawl, they pulled up a large plastic bag and inside, it was full of these packaged like blocks with multiple layers of wrapping. One of the deckhands cut it open, and to their surprise, cocaine! After keeping it under lock and key, the coast guard sent a boat out to retrieve their catch! Other than that, they have also caught rays with their wingspan of 5-6 feet. In order to save it, they would attach a rope to its tail and hoist it up with a crane to release it.

I have two more days of working, and then we will be pulling into port Monday morning! I'll try to write again before we dock!