Pelagic Hippo!

Yesterday we caught our first seahorse. I am not 100% sure of its species but we are thinking Hippocampus fisheri.  It is a pelagic seahorse which means it swims and drifts through the ocean instead of its benthic cousins that hang out on plants and reefs.

As of this morning it is still alive and kicking. It is even trying to feed on live copepods we caught in our nets. We wont bring it back to the aquarium unless we find more and it has a purpose. Otherwise we will take a ton of notes, pictures, video and try to gain an understanding for how this species lives.  I'll keep you all updated on its status.

First Cobb Trawl

Last night was our first Cobb Trawl of the trip. Basically we throw a big net behind the boat at certain depths for a couple of hours and see what we can catch. From an aquarium stand point we are looking for jellies and cookie cutter sharks, a rare and difficult species to hold in marine aquaria.

This trawl pulled up a lot of interesting fish and onsets but no jellies of interest and no sharks. We caught a lot of squid, shrimp, lantern fish, a hatchet fish, some flatfish, lizardfish, some box jellies and pelagic tunicates. You can google all of these fish if you're interested. What we caught we all in the smaller larval to juvenile stages. We even caught a couple of leptocephalus larvae; one that was almost a meter!

Our night lighting attempt was of no success either but we will try again tonight. So far this morning we have already caught a couple of jellies we are going to try and get larvae from onboard. We just launched the second tow so I will keep you informed as to how the day goes.  The wind is picking up wicked so hopefully that won't effect our catch at all.

Plankton Tows

Just off the big island doing some plankton tows. We've been catching a lot of larval fish and inverts. The water is an indescribable blue color and clear as day. We are doing a tow every hour until about 4.  Tonight we are going to start with our larger trawls and bring in some bigger animals.

This morning I got to use the treadmill before we got started. I only had time for a couple of miles but it was better than nothing. Its a sauna though in the "gym" so we'll see how much I get down there. With all of the food they're feeding us though I better keep running or I'm gonna be gaining a few pounds. We even had strawberry shortcake for dinner; how's a man supposed to pass that up?!

Ok back to work.  I'll let you know if we catch anything cool tonight!

Bon Voyage!

Just got on board and loaded all our gear onto the Sette. Now we are just hanging around for a bit, getting used to the ship and we should be getting underway in about an hour. It has internet access but mainly just for email.  There is an exercise room so I will hopefully get some running in. There is also a tv room and a theater room and we have a cable hookup so hopefully I wont miss the Pats opener! This is gonna be a great experience and cannot wait to start catching fish!

Kona Brewing Co.

View from KBC.  Had to eat some apps to hold us over before dinner. We hadn't eaten all day. Went to the aquarium before the brewing co.  Small place but still a pretty nice aquarium. 

Off(shore) I Go!

Headed off to Hawaii tomorrow morning for 17 days.  I will be on the NOAA ship Oscar Elton Sette for a 15-day trawling cruise off of Kona.  I fly into Honolulu sometime in the afternoon tomorrow and then have to get settled, put our stuff on the ship and then we are headed to dinner and hanging out Saturday night.  We get on the ship around 1:00 Sunday afternoon and then we'll be on board for 15 days.  I'm going with a guy from work and we are piggy-backing on a trip that will be doing mid-water and surface trawling, looking for fish larvae, cookie cutter sharks, jelly fish and whatever else we can find.

We get off the ship on Sunday September 11 and then fly back to Monterey on Monday afternoon.  I'll be sure to take a TON of pictures and keep a journal so I don't forget anything when I blog about it when I get back.

Aloha!

Chris

What SUP?

Get it???  Drove down to SoCal Thursday night to pick up a couple of used stand-up paddleboards.  Our initial stop was in Irvine, only about 6 hours south of Monterey.  We stayed at a friend of Megan's for the night and then kept going south Friday morning.  We had to pick the boards up in Oceanside, another 45 mins south at around 12:30.  We got down there at 11:00AM so we had some time to relax at the beach and enjoy the sun we hadn't seen in a long time.

12:30 came and we arrived at the place we were picking up the boards with some butterflies in the stomach due to the uncertainty of the condition of them and whether or not this was a good idea.  After checking out the boards though we decided to go for it and now we own our own personal stand-up paddleboards!  They are foam boards that came with a leash and paddle and I strapped them to the top of Megan's Forrester with about 50' of rope; they weren't going anywhere!

From Oceanside we kept traveling further south to San Diego, another 45 minutes.  We stopped at Coronado Beach at the Hotel del Coronado and waited until my friend Mike was home from work.  We got to their place around 4, caught up, cooked out and then went to the Padres game.  The Padres were playing the Marlins.  We had pretty good seats and the Padres managed to pull off a victory!  We only stayed this one night in SD and had to head back north Saturday morning.  It was a nice abbreviated trip but well worth it if not only for the sun alone.  We made it back to Monterey safe and sound with the boards in one piece and even though it took me almost 25 minutes to untie them from the roof, I'm glad I went that extra mile to secure them.  It pays off to have boating experience!!!

I'm feeling more and more Californian every day!  Life is good...

Quick Catch Up

I haven't written in a while so I thought I'd do a quick re-cap of the last couple weeks.  After getting home from my insane vacation I had one of my best weekends here in Monterey.  On the Wednesday after I got back I went to see E.T. in the outdoor theater in Carmel!  E.T. was supposedly the first movie I ever saw in the theater and has been a life-long theme of mine in my family growing up.  It is still a movie I love dearly and what a great way to finally see it in a theater.  I brought my Reese's Pieces for everyone to enjoy and despite it being Spielberg's re-do of the movie with a bunch of new scenes, a CGI E.T. and no guns it was still a great night.

That Friday night I finally got brave enough to go ocean swimming!  There is a group in town called the Kelp Krawlers that go swimming a few times each week.  On Fridays they meet at Lover's Point in Pacific Grove (only 10 mins from my place) and swim about 1/2 mile or so through the kelp.  It was quite an experience swimming through kelp and wasn't easy.  The water wasn't as cold as I thought I'd be and my brand new wetsuit kept me very warm and buoyant.  It was a good first swim and now I've been a few other times since.  I swam 1 1/4 miles on the Tuesday night swim following this Friday one, the furthest I'd ever swam.  The Tuesday night swims are at a different spot, sans kelp so it's much easier to just relax and go at your own pace.

Saturday morning started with my very first bootcamp.  I have that Tough Mudder in a month and needed to start doing something a bit tougher than just running.  It was only an hour class but it was a serious reality check!  It was a great workout and I was sore as heck the next day.  That afternoon I finally went SCUBA diving in a recreational setting.  A friend of Megan's is certified so we decided to go down to San Carlos beach which is only 3/4 mile from my place.  Our first dive was on the breakwater which is basically a jetty that shoots out passed the USCG station and is home to numerous sea lions (most of the time.)  We saw some amazing animals, no mammals, but a great number of sea stars, jellyfish, sea cucumbers, nudibranchs, crabs, and rockfish all living in and amongst the kelp beds and rock walls.

After warming up we went out on a second dive on the other end of the beach where there was supposedly a large pipe and a field of metridium (http://www.scubamonterey.com/infometridiumfield.html).  We found the pipe immediately and followed it to its end and then headed almost due north towards where the metridium were supposed to be.  Thankfully we found them and they were incredibly impressive.  What was most impressive though were the swarms of Pacific sea nettles that were swimming all around us.  It was almost a bit unnerving at first but such a magnificent sight, especially for a jelly enthusiast!

Since then it's just been a little running and I started on the track again, beach bonfires, work, swimming, catching up with old friends and even got a Giants game in last week!  One specific thing I did want to elaborate on was the Make-A-Wish Foundation's request for my coworker Alicia and me to show an 8-year old girl around the jellies area on her 8th birthday on August 8th...triple golden bday!  It was a very moving experience for everyone and Bella loved what we showed her and her family.  We even got to bring her down to the seahorses because Bella mentioned that they were some of her favorite animals.  Everyone was extremely pleased with the experience and it is a day I'll never forget!

Life is good...and it keeps getting better.

Wicked Good Summah Vacation (Part 6:Alicia and Luey Get Married!)

Saturday July 23, 2011 Alicia Hazard and Luial Gilbert got married.  It was a beautiful ceremony at the Owasco Country Club on my favorite place next to Fenway Park, Owasco Lake.  It was a short ceremony but the tears were flowing and you could easily see how much these two love each other.  Despite the excessive heat it was a perfect late afternoon.

The maid-of-honor gave the greatest 'speech' I have ever heard at a wedding and I have been to a TON of weddings.  She did a rap to the tune of "Ice, Ice, Baby" and it was phenomenal!  It was the first time that I have ever seen the best man's speech be filled with more sentiment and less humor (albeit there was still a lot of humor in his) than the maid-of-honor.

Once the laughter died down it was time to eat!  The food was great, the DJ rocked, there was no drama and everyone had a good time.  The DJ even said that the next time our family had a wedding he wanted to be invited because he had never seen a family get so crazy out on the dance floor!!!  With an open bar we were worried that our normal "finish every beer on sight" challenge would be tarnished.  But our very large family and very thirsty friends were up for it and we successfully drained the Owasco Country Club of all of their beverages!  Absolutely classic...

With the beer gone and the party dying down there was really only one more thing to do, cake fight!  I may have started this one by putting cake into my sister's face.  I was then on the receiving end and was soon realizing that there were a number of different cake fights taking place!  We all headed back to the hotel for the after party and even though everyone else wanted to go to bed around 2:00AM I didn't want to.  I knew that going to bed meant my vacation was over and that it would be another entire year until I would get a chance to spend time with all of these people that I love spending time with.  I know they probably don't realize it but I cherish every moment I get to spend on that lake, in that town, and with each and every one of them.

It's very hard to say goodbye to my NY family so I had to just take off in the AM without seeing anyone.  But even as hard as it is saying goodbye to my distant family it was even harder saying goodbye to my immediate family.  This was a very long vacation and I started to become comfortable being back with everyone I'm so familiar with.  The toughest part was knowing that I might not be back to the east coast for another full year. 

I flew out of Logan at 7:30 and arrived in San Francisco around 11:00PM  I then had to wait for a train and got my 2 hour drive underway.  I arrived home in Monterey a little before 3:00AM and was at work at 7:30.  I was absolutely exhausted but it was well worth it and one of the best vacations I have had in a long time.

Until next year New England!

Wicked Good Summah Vacation (Part 5: Auburn Here I Come!)

Thursday morning I got a rental car, a powder blue Hyundai deathtrap and headed for Auburn, NY for my cousin Alicia's wedding.  Before I headed towards the lake where all of Alicia's fam/friends were hanging out I went to my other cousin (on the other side of the fam) Scott's place.  It was about 100 degrees with 90% humidity so we immediately jumped into the pool.

From the pool we went to my cousin Beth's son's baseball game.  DJ is only 7 years old but he plays with the big kids on the 8-9 year old team.  His team lost but he had a heck of a game and even had a 'triple' with 2 RBIs!  When the game was over we left for our annual night out on the town.  Little did I know how many problems this would cause for me in the future, but I don't really care and it was an incredible night!  Despite the constant heat and humidity we managed to hit up a couple of different places, met up with my sister and cousin Mike, and closed down a bar until 3:00AM singing Sweet Caroline and Shipping Up to Boston into the early morning! Our stomachs grumbling by now we decided to stop at a local pizza place and grab a pepperoni.  That pizza didn't stand a chance!

In the AM we went over to my Aunt's place for more pizza (breakfast pizza).  After breakfast we went back over to Scott's place and hung by the pool until we had to check into our hotel.  At 3:00PM we left Scott's and checked in before dinner, got cleaned up, dressed and went to dinner with the immediate fam.  The festivities that night were at the lake and we had a ginormous fire along with pretty good fireworks!  This was my 4th of July celebration due to the piss poor efforts in Monterey.  It was a night filled with 30-person flip-cup, brief games of beruit, slap-the-bag, amongst other numerous shenanigans.  On our safe passage back to the hotel (thanks Nance!) AJ managed to start a "Pizza, pizza, pizza!" chant.  Just what my stomach did NOT want, but of course it happened.  We got back to the hotel and then walked over to the pizza place.  I ordered yet another pepperoni and we brought it back to the hotel.  Brian, a main conspirator in the "Pizza" chant didn't even get a slice cause he was sleeping by the time we got back...what a great night, God I love NY!

Next up: Wedding #2!

Wicked Good Summah Vacation (Part 4: Killing Time Between Weddings)

After Mike's wedding I had from all day Sunday until Thursday morning to catch up with other people from home before I had to head to New York for wedding no. 2.  Sunday started off on a great note when we went to breakfast at Cracker Barrel.  It was my friend Erik, his wife Amber, my friend Pat and his fiance.  I ordered biscuits and gravy, a pretty simple order I thought.  After waiting for almost 45 minutes I had gotten up to go to the bathroom.  As I came back to the table the food was there and as I looked down at my plate I noticed something missing...I had 3 biscuits, no gravy!  Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight!  My friends told me they ran out of gravy but they should have some more brought out quickly.  The waitress then came up to the table and I told her that something was missing.  She responded by saying it will be out shortly only to come back a few minutes later with, "I have really bad news.  The gravy isn't going to be ready for another 20 minutes."  HA!  I then responded with "I have really great news, this meal is free!"  Not more than three minutes later and guess what I had in front of me, thats' right, gravy!!!  Funny how that happened right after I said it was free.  She proceeded to question if I still wanted it off the bill and obviously I said yes.  It was the first time in my life I never left a tip...horrid service!

The rest of the day was a great time to catch up with the fam and dad made us a nice big dinner (ribs, chicken, a couple different types of salad...all good stuff).  After dinner we made some s'mores over the firepit that had very rarely been used.  Dad proceed to try and burn the neighborhood down but after we got the flames under control it was time to flame the mallows!  The rest of the night was spent chillaxing, watching movies, and getting some much needed rest.

Monday morning I drove up to Rockport to meet up with a buddy from the New England Aquarium.  We went on a quick dive and due to me getting the dive flag tangled up in a lobster pot and sucking air trying to fix it we turned back after hitting 71'.  It was a quick dive, not much to see except a few lobsters, flounders, and schools of fish.  With the dive basically a bust we went back to his place and ate some burgers and chicken on the grill.  Monday night I got a chance to catch up with my aunt, uncle, and cousin and then just relaxed the rest of the night.

Tuesday I got to meet Boston Bruins' defenseman Andrew Ference who was signing autographs to promote the new championship DVD.  It was at the local Stop N' Shop and he was a wicked nice guy.  He wasn't like most athletes that just sign and pass, but instead was talking to everyone.  I got three DVDs and a poster signed...pretty sweet!  That night I headed into town and met up with my friend Jess for about an hour before I went to the aquarium.  At the aquarium I checked out the new exhibits and then met up with everyone afterwards.  It was yet another typical crazy, epic night out with some amazing people that I miss greatly.

Wednesday I spent the day packing up and then at night my sister, dad, a couple friends from high school and I went to the Lowell Spinners, a single-A ball club of the Red Sox.  It's a small ball park so there aren't really any bad seats (no matter what Chris D. says) and there is all kinds of advertising throughout the stadium.  One advertisement that stood out to us was for a mobile food website that you could order from the vendors with. All you had to do was choose what you wanted online, pay with a CC and they delivered the food.  So obviously we had to try this (especially at the behest of my sister!) This poor girl came to our row with 7 beers and 2 orders of chicken tenders!!  A-MA-ZING!  Of course we had to order a 2nd round and the same poor girl came down again, sweating her butt off...good stuff.  That night we all went out into Lowell...that's about all I can say about that night.  We definitely had fun though and it was a great way to spend my last night in Massachusetts for a long time!!!

Next up: Off to New York I go!

Wicked Good Summah Vacation (Part 3: Mikey's Wedding)

Saturday July 16th, 2011 Michael Linehan and Sara Goblinger got married!!!  The ceremony was very nice, it was outside at Mike's parents' house and Mike's friend Matt from high school was the officiant.  Matt did a great job with sentiment and humor as he read allowed the vows that Mike and Sara will share for the rest of their lives.

Apres le ceremony we had more pictures to take while we watched in envy of the guests eating the appetizers and drinking the free beverages.  Once pictures were done we went through the introductions, the first dance, I gave a phenomenal speech and finally we started eating.  The food was delicious and set up buffet style with steak tips, chicken, pasta salad and a few other things as well.

Once everyone was done stuffing their bellies it was time to get on the dance floor!  At first I was a bit hesitant to get out there because the only people dancing were Sara's relatives but finally I got out there.  It was a pretty good time and the music was rockin' our sox off!

The dance party started dying down around 9 and then people started moving into the pool.  The pool party ended abruptly after "that guy," and no it wasn't me, pushed one of our friends into the pool right into a group of girls.  Trying to avoid the helpless ladies Pat tried to jump over all of them but unfortunately nailed two of them in the head, one of them being the bride.  That was a quick end to the evening!  Even with this minor hiccup everyone had a really good time and it was a great chance to catch up with old friends.

Congrats to Mikey and Sara!!