13 Dec - It's Always Greener at the Chlorophyll Max.

This morning was a really interesting morning!  We performed a station and net tow, as usual, but had some unique results.  The CTD revealed more chlorophyll in the water column than usual as well as a particularly shallow chlorophyll max layer ~ 5m!  This was even more apparent when I filtered the water from this depth.  Check it out:

 This is a picture of a 2 micron filter after 300ml of water were filtered through.  The brown stuff is phytoplankton!  Usually we filter 500ml and the filters are only lightly tinted brown.

We also had a unique catch in the net tow!  We caught lots of little transparent copepods - they were so full from nomming [Editor: Katie informs me that nomming is how the kids say "eating" these days.] phytoplankton their guts were green under the scope!  We also caught a myctophid (a type of laternfish) and other fun zooplankton.  Pretty cool!

This is an ostracod!  We haven't caught too many of these critters yet!

This is a gammarid amphipod!  His stomach is green from eating so much phytoplankton!  What a life!

-Katie