Otter Trawl

Hello from the South! This morning we had another meeting to make sure we were all comfortable with how to process the king-crab samples. Alaister Brown gave a demonstration on how to correctly measure each crabs using a cutout crab that we named Charlie. In the afternoon we reached our study site! We attached an otter trawl to the back of the ship and lowered it into the water. The otter trawl has a large net that is designed to glide along the ocean floor and funnel bottom-dwelling animals into the net. When we were ready to bring our sample back to the surface, we pulled up on the net so that our collection of animals were safely secured in the back of the net. We have completed one trawl so far and we are currently waiting for the next one to come up. Next, we are planning to drop our cameras into the water to start our search for those Antarctic king crabs!

-Steph, Katie, and Dan   

Steph with Charlie the practice crab