NOAA Teacher at Sea
Our Year in Did You Know
Our Year in Did You Know
In 2015...
In 2015, NOAA Teacher at Sea Program staff added to our library of Did You Know: Tweets from Sea, bite-sized facts about research cruises, hydrography, and marine life. Each week, we featured a Did You Know "tweet" on our website, Facebook, and Twitter. Below are your Top Ten picks of 2015!
Did You Know?
After being measured and weighed, these sea scallops will be returned to the ocean.
When the dredge comes up we will sort all the species into their buckets, count and measure the scallops, count and measure the fish, toss back the sand dollars, star fish and most often the crabs.
-- Kathleen Brown
Did You Know?
Filefish have slim, retractable spines on their foreheads that help protect them against predators.
"When sargassum makes its way into our Neuston net, we collect all of it into large buckets. We have to rinse all of the sargassum off into large buckets to make sure that we collect all of the creatures living inside of it. We do this because we want to get the most accurate sampling of the population of living organisms in the sampling area. Depending on how much sargassum is collected in the Neuston net, the collection process can anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour!"
--Stacey Jambura
Did You Know?
Beachgoers sometimes find "mermaid's purses" like this one washed ashore. The "purse" is actually the egg case of a skate or a shark.
Even though our mission is to collect data on sharks, you never know what might come up on the end of a hook (or tangled in the line!). Data is still collected on just about everything else we catch. [This is a] "Mermaid’s Purse," an egg case from a skate. Candling the Mermaid’s Purse reveals the tail and yolk of the animal.
--Steven Frantz
Did You Know?
A hammerhead shark's eyes are located at either end of its broad, extended head, which is called a "cephalofoil."
WThe Scalloped Hammerhead has been my favorite so far. There is something truly magnificent about those wide-set eyes. Unfortunately, the Scalloped Hammerhead is Endangered. The Scalloped Hammerhead can be found in coastal temperate waters all around the world. In each of these regions, it is threatened by capture, mostly as by-catch in fishing gear, gillnets, and longlines. Hammerhead shark fins are also more valuable than other species because of their high fin count. The species is in decline.
--Julie Karre
Did You Know?
Scientists use a fish's ear bones, called otoliths, to tell its age. After preparing the otolith in the lab, scientists count the rings just as one does with a tree trunk.
Collection of otoliths is the only way to accurately determine the age of the fish in the random sample and be able to extrapolate that data to determine the estimated age of all the pollock in the fishery. Here is a photo comparing otolith size of Walleye pollock with their lengths.
--Allan Phipps
Did You Know?
Humpback whales periodically leap out of the water. This is called breaching.
I was also able to see some Pacific white sided dolphins bow riding and two humpback whales about 20 feet off the bow. They popped up in front of the boat and we had to slow down so we didn’t interrupt them.
--Talia Romito
Did You Know?
Horseshoe crabs' blood has hemocyanin molecules, not hemoglobin, to carry oxygen. Copper in hemocyanin colors the blood blue instead of red.
Horseshoe crabs, like this one, have blue blood. Unlike the blood of mammals, they don’t have hemoglobin to carry oxygen, instead they have henocyanin. Because the henocyanin has copper in it, their blood is blue!
--Kaitlin Baird
Did You Know?
Sargassum is a free-floating seaweed that provides refuge for many small creatures.
Sometimes the Neuston goes through sargassum, a free floating seaweed. The sargassum sometimes floats as small clumps, and sometimes vast mats cover the water. I watched a few pieces float by with fish seeking protection by carefully positioning themselves directly underneath the seaweed. The sargassum is great refuge for little critters and we have to pick through it carefully to pull out all the plankton, many of which are well camouflaged in the tangle of orange.
--Sarah Boehm
Did You Know?
NOAA hydrographic ships carry small boats called “survey launches” that are lowered into the water to survey shallower areas.
Starting in the 1990s, single-beam sonar became the primary mechanism for NOAA’s surveys. Still looking straight down, single-beam sonar on large ships and on their small “launch vessels” (for areas that couldn’t be accessed safely by larger craft) provided a much more complete mapping of the seafloor than the ropes used previously. Sonar systems constantly (many times per second) ping while traveling back and forth across and along a channel, using the speed and angle of reflection of the emitted sound waves to locate and measure the depth of bottom features.
--Rob Ulmer
Did You Know?
The sargassum fish is a weak swimmer that spends its life clinging to the floating seaweed. It uses its fleshy fins as lures to attract prey.
A unique member of the otherwise bottom-dwelling frogfishes, the Histrio histrio has smooth skin, and spends its life hitch-hiking along in the gulf-weed forest. Like other members of the family Antennariidae, it is an ambush predator, luring other creatures to their doom by angling with its fleshy fins.
-Dave Grant
Thanks to Our teachers and supporters for making the 2015 Teacher at Sea season such a success. We look forward to a tremendous in 2016!
Check out our 2015 Blog Year in Review and our 2015 Photo of the Week Year in Review
Check out our 2015 Blog Year in Review and our 2015 Photo of the Week Year in Review
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