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Day 3, August 3, 2005 TER daily cruise report

Day break found the RV NANCY FOSTER in calm seas on the west side of the Tortugas Bank. This bank is the smaller and deeper of the two main banks and is located to the west of the larger Monument Bank, near the margin of the West Florida Shelf.

view from the bridge
View from the bridge of the
RV Nancy Foster

The two banks are separated by a trench called the “river”, a name derived from the strong currents that occur there. Though the sea surface was glassy at day break, large squalls surrounded us and the deck was wet from a visitation before sunrise. Our third dive of the day was postponed by one of these squalls that can be best described as a frog choker. Today we conducted scuba surveys of five of our study sites; four on the western side of Tortugas Bank and one on the eastern side in the 'River'. We recorded another Goliath grouper today and a number of large mutton snappers. These sightings are encouraging as in our initial surveys, prior to the establishment of the Tortugas Ecological Reserve, these species were not recorded in our fish censuses.

We are continuing to recover the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission sonic tag receivers. Rather than rely solely on a small boat as we did yesterday, today we enlisted the Nancy Foster and picked up the receivers and heavy pedestal with the ships main winch and J frame. Maneuvering a 186 ft research vessel so the J frame is within boat hook distance of a buoy, with the wind perpendicular to the current, is quite a trick. The men and women of the NOAA corps made it look easy.

Night ops: Drop camera and beam trawl operations were conducted in the NW quadrat of the Reserve and on the adjacent shelf open to fishing. Our stations are closer together in this area and we were able to complete five sets of camera drifts and beam trawl samples. The waters here are around 110 ft in depth and the sediment is fine sand and unvegetated. The bottom is pocked by numerous pits and cone shaped mounds made by polychaete worms and burrowing shrimp. Perhaps the intense bioturbation caused by these benthic animals prevents colonization by macroalgae and seagrass. Pink shrimp were a noticeable part of our catch as were flatfish including a beautiful three eyed flounder, honey comb moray eels, pancake batfish, rock shrimp, portunid crabs and abundant star fish.