Yellow-headed jawfish I'm so excited I can hardly sleep ... today was incredible! We did so many things. We collected samples of plankton from the traps that we left out overnight, swam with three plankton tows, filmed three scenes for the documentary, set up the nighttime plankton traps and then, the highlight of my day, spent a few hours in the water capturing the stunning behavior of sea creatures in slow-motion with the Edgertronic camera. This is the first time this ultra high-speed camera has been used underwater, and It's amazing what we're able to see through the lens of this camera. We're learning things about animals' behaviors we never knew before!
VIDEO OF THE DAY
| | Here's a sneak peak of the kind of footage we are capturing. This clip shows a yellow-headed jawfish popping out of it's den, and then spiting out a mouthful of sand. In real time, this happens in the blink of an eye, but today we filmed it at the high speed of 2,000 frames per second, so you can see details of the fish's movement. We've also filmed sail fish, crabs dancing (what are they doing?!), sergeant major, coral cups feeding, Christmas tree worms, and bubbles. Incredible! |
WAIT, WHY IS THE VIDEO IN BLACK AND WHITE?
We are filming with a monochrome camera because it's more light sensitive than it's color counterpart, and in high-speed photography in general (and underwater in particular) we are hard-pressed for light. Visible light just doesn't travel well underwater. However, Edgertronic loaned us a color camera, and it arrived today! Let's see if we can get it to work underwater!
AQUARIUS VIEWPORT SWIM-BY
| This was a great Google hangout today about coral reef health in the Caribbean Basin hosted by Northeastern University's Urban Coastal Sustainability Initiative. Fabien, Liz and i were conducting research outside and "dropped by" to say hello in the Aquarius viewport. "You never know who's going to swim-by the viewport when you're in Aquarius," said Mark Patterson. |  A swim-by the Aquarius viewport during a coral reef discussion are Fabien, a yellowfish, Liz and me. |
WOMEN IN SCIENCE
I also posted this great video, Aquanauts Switch Mid-Mission from the Mission 31 production team showing Liz, Matt and I trading places with Adam, Andy and Kip to become fully- saturated aquanuts on the mission four days ago!
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