Icy Inverts Antarctica Cruise Nov-Dec 2013 - Equipment

Below are listed the major pieces of equipment or techniques that will be used to sample Antarctic waters during the cruise.

ADCP: Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler; attaches to the bottom of the boat to determine current speeds in the different water layers; can also determine the amount of plankton in the different water layers.
A-Frame: part of the ship that is roughly shaped like an "A"; guides a winch wire to aid in deploying and retrieving equipment.
Box core: used to collect bottom samples from the sea floor; removes a portion of the sea floor and brings it to the surface.
Epibenthic sled: a bottom sampling sled that trawls the surface of the sea floor occasionally digging into the bottom sediment; equipped with a mesh net into which benthic organisms are caught and a front door that closes when organisms are being brought up to the surface.
Plankton net: fine mesh net used to collect small to microscopic plankton.
Otter trawl: a large fishing net used for collecting organisms primarily on the bottom or near the bottom of the sea floor.
Rock dredge: used to sample the bottom in rocky areas; a steel square with chain mesh that scrapes the bottom collecting benthic organisms.
Smith-MacIntyer grab: a bottom sampling device that closes like a jaw on bottom sediment; used for polychaete collections in deeper sediment.
Tucker trawl: a fishing net with fine mesh that has three different nets that can be opened and closed separately at different times while sampling; used to collect plankton.
XBT: Expendable Bathythermograph; a probe released into the water column to obtain information about water temperatures at various depths.

Last updated: 11/12/2013