Sea Trees? part deux

Sorry for the lack of writing as of late. I guess its been a mixture of bloggers block and sheer laziness.

The epic saga of the sea trees continues...

We made it back out to the Gulf for some more ROV/Hook Selectivity experiments last week, and it was a fun trip. Kate, a colleague of mine, and her friend Kristy drove from LSU to join the field crew (Btw, I love to use the term "colleague"...it's so humorously academic and pretentious. I can't say it without laughing and rolling my eyes). We also recruited some other charter boat captains and deckhands to help with the fishing. So we had some real cooperative research going on with an equal mix of fishermen and scientists. The ROV worked well, we caught some big fish, and the weather was perfect. Our final stop of the day brought us to the sea trees.

We arrived at a different area of the tree ledge a little further away from our last trip. We sent down the ROV to conduct the transects, and the water looked to be a little more murky than last time. There also seemed to be a higher density of tree stumps, with quite a few trunks that were several feet in diameter. It must have been an old forest. There were flounder everywhere. Flying the ROV near the bottom, I would kick up one every few feet. I also kicked up the silty sediment whenever the machine would get close to the bottom. It looked like the bottom of a lake.

After the transects, we attached the grabber arm to the ROV.

Fetch the stick boy. Get the stick...go get the stick!

It was like being inside the biggest crane grabber game in the world. But instead of going after a pokemon plushie, I had to grab a stick. The ROV grabber has one directional movement, open and close. So it's alot harder than you'd think to grab something.

I went the entire day without any advice from anyone about my piloting skills. But for that ten minutes, I had 5 back seat drivers.

Innuendos. So, so many.

I thought maybe it would feel petrified or something, but it looks and feels like any stick that you'd find in your backyard. Hopefully we'll get this carbon aged pretty soon. How old do you think it is?