Jennifer's letter, answered by Miriam Doyle, a biological scientist from NOAAs Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle

Dear Jennifer,

Hi Jennifer and thanks for writing your letter to a scientist on the Oscar Dyson.  In order to give you an idea about what we have been doing, here is what I just wrote to Eric Crossfield who asked about the styrofoam heads and cups that you guys sent to Alaska for us to send down to deep water (then I’ll answer your questions in the next paragraph):
Today is Thursday April 29th and we’re heading south, back to our first mooring site in the south east Bering Sea where we brought a mooring to the surface, took it on board and exchanged some of the instrumentation, redeployed it, and carried out oceanographic and plankton sampling around it.  Yesterday and last night we tried to reach the mooring site that is further north but there was too much sea ice for us to get through, so we had to turn back as this ship is not an ice-breaker.  Close to the southern mooring site, we will do another transect of sampling stations, including water sampling, that runs from shallow water to really deep water off the shelf.  When we get into the really deep water, we will attach a container with your heads and cups to our CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth measuring instruments on a frame that also includes water bottles for sampling water at different depths), and send it down as deep as 1000 m if we can.  Apparently the best way to do this is to put the stuff in some sort of mesh bag so that the water can get through, and so that way the water pressure will be most effective.  A pillow case seems to be very appropriate for this exercise and we certainly have plenty of those out here.  I haven’t actually seen this done before myself so it will be fun.  However, I have seen some styrofoam cups with writing on them that have been sent down and back from deep water, and they maintained their structure very well.  They were like little miniature versions of themselves, and the writing was also maintained but just shrunk.  Essentially, the water pressure will squeeze all the air bubbles out of the styrofoam and the structure will shrink.  If there are no air bubbles left when they are taken to the surface again, the structures should be maintained in their shrunken form.  Well, it’s going to be really interesting to see how that works out with the heads!

And now for your questions Jennifer:
I don’t know your teacher Mr Jenkins but he sounds like a cool guy and a great teacher – lucky you!  What a great way for your class to learn about marine science by interacting with scientists and crew on board one of NOAA’s research vessels.  By the way, thanks to you guys for sending the goodies in the box too – the chocolates were especially good!

My favorite colors are the same as the first two on your list of four: blue and green!  Maybe because I’m much older than you I haven’t heard of your favorite band Green Day, but I’ll check them out when I get home.  I bet my kids will know who they are – I have a 16 year old son, and 14 and 11 year old daughters.    My favorite band of all time is the rock band Dire Straits – however, they don’t exist anymore (see I told you I was old; ask your parents or your teacher about them!) but their lead singer Mark Knopfler still produces his own music.  My favorite food is Thai food, especially their soups and curries.

Yes, I have seen whales (humpback, grey, and Orca whales), dolphins, and puffins, all while at sea on research vessels.  Haven’t seen any whales on this trip yet but we have seen ice seals and bearded seals on the sea ice when we were trying to go through it.  Check them out on the NOAA educational websites.  That’s really cool that your class is looking at those.  There is a lot of great information there, especially the photographs.  Take a look at some of the photos that show plankton and you’ll see some of the tiny creatures that I study!

We’ll keep you posted and thanks for your interest.  Keep up the good work!

Yours sincerely,

Miriam Doyle

PS:  I’m a biologist and I study plankton, especially the early stages of fish species that occur as eggs and larvae in the plankton.  I work at NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.