05 Dec - Southern Ocean Salp Suckers Society Induction Ceremony

It’s going on 2 weeks into the cruise now and each day is melding into the others. I no longer know what day of the week it is or what happened on any particular day without sitting and thinking for a few minutes. HOWEVER! Today is a notable one. Notably good!

First, I awoke this morning to learn that Joe has decreased our workload, w00t! Mostly, we’re not counting and measuring as many zooplankton. We still working or on-call 16 hour shifts total, but our on watch hours are significantly easier, leaving much more down time during the latter half of our shifts and potentially more time for sleeping (although I’ve yet to experience that because for some reason we seem to hit every station while I’m on).

Second, pizza for dinner.

Third, I found a strange Spanish Nestle chocolate flavored powdered energy drink behind the hot chocolate mix, which I added to my hot chocolate. It was quite tasty. And apparently very effective. I was on vibrate mode for a few hours.

Fourth, and finally, at the end of the day (well, the end of my day which ends at 4 in the morning when I get off shift) we hit the salp motherload. Buckets of salps! With the abundance of the gelatinous plankton, Joe made an executive decision. It was time for the LMG1010 first meeting of the Southern Ocean Salp Suckers Society! Karen and I were the new inductees as Katie was off shift and in bed. Induction into SOSSS is very simple and requires only one thing: you must eat a salp. Joe handed us each a salp from one of our buckets, took one for himself, and then it was down the hatch. It was a unique experience. The salp slid down my throat in one salty swoop, no chewing required. Not so bad! Not as good as, say, pizza or cookies but probably better than eating a krill, so I’m not complaining.

Melissa enjoys a snack between meals on the L.M. Gould.

-Melissa