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THE MAINE EVENT: FALL 2004 Predation by Gelatinous Zooplankton in the Gulf of Maine MISSION DISPATCH 3 • Thursday, September 16, 2004 Location: Wilkinson Basin Dispatch by Jessica Frost-Fajans - Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution Murphy's Law! What can go wrong will go wrong. What a day! Keith, Calle, Franz, Sofie, Ebba, Jessica, and Brian setup and deployed the MOCNESS at 0245. At approximately 0400 a main bearing on the winch, which hauls this system of 9 opening-closing nets, started smoking! Luckily, water from a deck hose cooled the bearing enough 
to allow retrieval of the gear by 0645. This setback was just the first of the problems we
encountered today. To add insult to injury, the wire on a second winch became entangled on itself
when we used a 1-meter diameter net. This mess happens when wire pays out faster than the end of
the cable descends. Deckhands cut out the knotted wire and reattached the fittings.
The next surprise was the failure of the chiller that circulates water through a special photo tank. Fortunately, this aquarium, called a plankton kreisel, was situated inside one of the four temperature-controlled labs. By lowering the temperature in the room, we were able to maintain the water at 6 degrees C. This procedure keeps the deep-sea animals alive and allows 
David to
record digital images of them with still and video cameras. Unfortunately, this solution forced
him to wear multiple layers of clothing!
Lab problems continued. The spectrophotometer, which is needed to analyze water samples for excretion products generated during metabolic experiments, broke down. The tungsten lamp burned out, and there wasn't a spare to be found. Extra bulbs have been ordered and shipped to Gloucester. We'll be back in business with this instrument at the end of next week when some of the science crew disembarks. In the meantime, we're freezing samples. 
And, during the afternoon dive of the JSL submersible,
a small air leak developed in the aft chamber, so the vehicle returned to the surface earlier than planned. A faulty O-ring was
replaced; the sub was good-to-go for the evening dive.
On the positive side, David had his first ride in the JSL sphere and Sofie enjoyed her first dive to 2,944 ft in the aft chamber. And so it goes. Every cruise has its challenges but there's usually a solution. 
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