 The crew sorting samples from the benthic skimmer This past weekend I managed to fit in a quick sampling trip out on the Gulf of Mexico with Darryl Felder and his lab from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. This trip was designed to make up for some days that we lost on an earlier trip this year due to hurricane Isaac's path. Fortunately for us, this trip wasn't full of the suspense of an impending hurricane, so we were able to sample at all of our planned field sites. We left from LUMCON on Wednesday night, and traveled through the night to our first field site. We sampled at this site, and all subsequent sites, using a benthic skimmer at depths up to 1,800m. This always results in the collection of unique and interesting specimens that don't get seen often. These trips also serve the purpose to monitor species diversity and abundance at sites that could have been impacted by the deepwater horizon oil spill. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to serve on several of these trips in the near future, as they are always a fun time.
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