My name is Kelly Walker.
I’m a fisheries grad student
and my role on this cruise is to run the bottom trawl net
to collect samples of fish and benthic invertebrates.
It’s a plumb staff beam trawl.
so it’s a beam trawl net.
Specifically on this net. it’s a three meter beam.
so it’s only about nine feet. less than ten feet. long.
And. as it’s going along on the bottom.
there are floats on top that keep the top of the net open.
And. essentially. it’s just dragging along the
bottom to collect the sample of fish or invertebrates.
And then you tie the net shut at the end
with a simple daisy chain knot
so you’re able to quick release it
once it comes up on deck
with the big bag that you usually have.
Before we take the catch out of the trawl net itself.
we like to rinse out the mud.
And most of the time it’s very watery mud
and the stuff that’s not going to rinse out
often has organisms caught in it.
And so by kneeing it or kicking it.
along with spraying it with the hose.
it’s able to get most of that fine grain sediment
out of there so it’s easier to rinse
once we get it out of the net.
It’s a pretty good way of mass sampling
what’s down there because you can get
a really good count of abundance and biomass of.
specifically. benthic invertebrates and benthic fishes
is really what it’s good for sampling.
Smaller trawls are a lot easier to use
than larger commercial fish survey trawls.
Even other scientific trawls can be a lot larger than this
and it’s not dragged for as long.
Our nets are only dragged up to
forty five minutes and those go on for hours.
One of the most challenging things.
especially this trip. has been the ice.
I really can’t trawl with heavy ice cover
because there’s a really strong possibility
of an ice floe taking the wire and it can break the wire.
It can really damage that trawl wire.
And then. also. a really big challenging thing.
specifically about the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.
is the sediment type that’s down here.
It’s really thick mud and we have been
able to modify our plumb staff beam trawl net by
putting a set of roller gear on them and.
essentially. they’re like tiny little tires
that just roll across the sea floor
instead of digging in like the net.
if it was unmodified. would do.
Another challenge is fishing at depth.
You have to think about putting more
weight on the net to make sure it
actually gets down to depth.
and then you have to make sure that
you have enough floats on that net to
make sure it doesn’t just close in on itself.
and that the net is not just going to
sink into the seafloor with all
of that extra weight on it as well.
So. depth and sediment type and ice
I think are the three main things that
are the most challenging up here.
I think it’s really important for women
to keep getting involved with science.
Get out there and get muddy. that’s a good one.
That’s exactly what we do.