By Madison Maier, Aquaculture Manager
Parker loaded up with sampling equipment and dive gear!
Last Thursday (December 10th ), Phoebe, Silas, and I finished our 2020 sampling! The data is for our long-term GSI research project, so we will be right back at it in January. But still, it feels like a nice milestone when I frame it this way.
My first stop of my morning was to the office to collect our gear. As I was loading up my trunk, I realized I had a rare opportunity to take advantage of my dry wetsuit. After a summer and fall of having to wiggle into a damp wetsuit for every dive, this felt like quite the treat. I put it on right there in the office, and then layered up on top of it. This sneaky move meant I didn’t have to change into it later, and stayed cozy and bundled up the whole time.
Processing samples at the end of the day in the office basement. By weighing total visercia and comparing it to the weight of the gonad, we can calculate the GSI.
The three of us met up at the trusty Parker at 7am, and started on our way to Stonington. As Phoebe said many times over the course of the day, “These are the winter weather days you wait for!” The conditions were calm and we made it over Marsden and Bobby Brewer’s farm by 8. After grabbing our scallops and a belated ‘Happy Birthday’ to Marsden, we headed over to North Haven for our second and last site of the day.
Phoebe and I got ready to go into the water, as we don’t have the capacity to haul up the long line were the nets hang. We bundled up in wetsuits, hoods, and gloves. While we checked our gear to make sure everything was working correctly, we all went over the dive plan. From start to finish, our dive only lasted 6 minutes. We descended down a surface marker, unzipped our lantern nets 25 feet below the surface, and stuffed our scallops into the extra bags we bought. We had more than a dozen dives at this site, but this was the coldest with the strongest current. However, we were well prepared and everything went off without a hitch!
After surfacing and warming up (I recommend jumping jacks and hats post 44 degree water), we headed back to the mainland. Arriving back to Camden Harbor was like living in a snow globe. The Camden Hills were covered in a light dusting and the snow falling on our boat was just starting to stick. It was a successful day of collecting samples and a worthy last trip of the season for our boat, which will be hauled out next week.
