This year's trip highlights were many - a dice with Hurricane Isabel, a 5 meter Greenland shark bumping into JSL at 900 meters (the video of this event was removed from Dispatch 14 because viewing requests overloaded the HBOI web server), a wonderful collection of bioluminescent organisms (including a deep-sea octopus that has replaced its suckers with glow in the dark organs) and the usual, he says casually, collection of new and undescribed sea jellies and comb jellies.
One of the really great aspects of this year's cruise was the presence of six young scientists on board. Three were post graduate PhD students, two were undergraduate students and the final one was a research assistant. Apart from bringing a great deal of fun and youthful enthusiasm on board, Anio, Brian, Whit, Brennan, Nicole and Helen showed me just how much an experience such as this can shape a young life.
Maine Event www.at-sea.org
Harry's mission dispatches for the 2003 Maine Event expedition are at
www.at-sea.org/missions/maineevent4/feature.html.
His mission dispatches for the 2002 expedition can be found at www.at-sea.org/missions/maineevent3/preview.html. The Maine Event section of the at-sea web site provides full details of the expedition, technology used and has videos and animations.
