We see the animal go into the tube without a hitch and begin its journey to the holding container. This time we decide to use the suction hose for collection. It isn’t long before we find another Flapjack, flapjacking along the bottom. “Well, there goes the neighborhood…” Illustration by J.R. Some people think they are a ‘dumbo octopus’ ( Grimpoteuthis spp.) like Pearl in Pixar’s Finding Dory, but while similar, they aren’t the same. Flapjack octos move slowly on the substrate, sometimes wriggling into the muck presumably to feed, and sometimes they leave the bottom, pushing themselves through the water by opening and closing like an adorable umbrella (I like to think they are de-evolving into Jellies). This is a ‘gelatinous’ octopus that not enough is known about, but man is it cool: soft bodied, orangish/pinkish skin, two ear like fins on its mantle, webbing between its single row of besuckered arms, and huge eyes which make it look like an Anime character that just wants to be loved. Within a few minutes we see our first Flapjack octopus. Today we are only diving to 400 meters (1300 feet) as opposed to the 1200 meters (3900 feet) on my last trip, and the ROV gets to the site quickly. My wife says that you only need one cool sighting on any animal safari to make a terrible trip into the best trip ever, and on this trip we don’t have to wait long. This is the best of safari – the thrill of expectation. What will we see? What we are looking for? A surprise? Something no one has ever seen before? Anything could happen at any time. The control room is filled with ceph-loving colleagues and we are looking at the screens like children looking at Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. Pilots and Science crew piloting and sciencing. Today we are going to be using all three methods to collect octopus, mud and rocks, and some jellies. This spatula is also used to move animals from the substrate into the water column for collection. There is also another arm that holds a supersized spatula that looks like a racquetball racket with plastic mesh as the strings that is used to pick up small rocks and mud. There is a manipulator arm with a grabber on the end to, well, grab stuff. There is also a big drawer that opens and closes for collecting specimens that won’t try to swim away like rocks, mud, or corals. There is a suction hose that is connected to a carousel of specimen containers that is used to collect both animals in the water column and on the substrate. There is an array of static acrylic tubes open at both ends that are held on an armature for collecting specimens in the water column, By moving the ROV itself, through amazing piloting skills, the specimen is positioned in the tube which is then closed top and bottom. There are a few ways to collect animals with this ROV. While the pilots go through the NASA-like pre-dive checks on the ROV, the science and aquarium crew prepare the devices needed for the live healthy capture of deep sea animals and samples. MBARI science crew and MBA aquarists making sure collection containers are set and ready to go on the ROV Ventana. However, this cruise is different The sea is flat, and chock full of octopuses. What made it worse was that we didn’t see much that trip…mostly marine snow, in all different directions on the million screens…nothing to distract from feeling ill. All these active video feeds of different views combined with the rocking ship got to me. Some screens in the control room show data (depth, water parameters, ROV status, video capture, etc.), but most of them show different views from the multitude of cameras pointing different directions on the ROV. The front of the control room is covered by a million (really, I counted) screens which receive information and send control signals to the ROV through a tether that connects the submersible to the ship. In the bowels of the ship is a little, dark, control room with several ROV pilot chairs, several science stations, and some space for observers to stand. I didn’t get full on sea sick, but just a taste of that awful mind body goofiness, and it wasn’t the big seas that did me in. On that last cruise, the seas were anything but calm. Counting the million screens in the control room.
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