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We enjoy learning about the Southern Ocean on the Dive & Discover web site. Could you tell us what happens to the salps during the winter? We saw them on the summer map, but not the winter map.

SEAS Class
Grade 5
Atholton Elementary School
Columbia, MD

Dear SEAS Class and Ms. Lewis:

Thanks for your question about salps in winter. It's a very good question and we wish we really knew the full answer. They usually begin to disappear in the fall (March-April), are very scarce in the Antarctic winter (May-July), and start to reappear in spring (October-November). One theory is that some of them stay down deep through the winter, and then come up shallower as spring arrives and the phytoplankton that they eat begins to grow. Then the salps start to grow and reproduce rapidly. Part of the reason we don't know much about them in winter is that most scientists work in Antarctica in the summer. The winter is much colder, ice makes it harder to sample the plankton and it's dark almost all the time. Watch for a Hot Topic all about salps and their interesting life history, coming up on Dive and Discover.

Thanks for tuning in.

Larry Madin
Chief Scientist
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Will any of your footage be seen on the Discovery channel or any other channel? My son would love to see this.

Melinda Watson
Salem, Oregon
Chemeketa Community College

Dear Melinda:

Thanks for your question about video. We don't know yet if it might be used in a television program. There aren't any plans at this time. Discovery Channel did a program in 2003 called “Science of the Deep: Midwater Mysteries" that was partly about our work on salps in the Atlantic Ocean.  Sometimes it gets rerun on Discovery or the Science Channel. We will be putting some short video clips on the Dive and Discover website.

Larry Madin
Chief Scientist
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Do you have any underwater cameras installed on the outside bottom of the hull?

Patric Espejo
1st grade - homeschool
Orlando, Florida

Dear Patric:

When we got your question, we all thought it sounded like a good idea to have cameras in the hull—then we could see what was underwater without needing to go diving or use our plankton nets. But we don't have those cameras, and there are a few reasons why. Probably most important here is that the ship has to push its way through ice, and the ice might damage or break the cameras or the windows they look out of. Instead of having cameras in the hull, scientists use various kinds of cameras that are put into the water from the ship.  Divers can take cameras with them, or they can be lowered on a cable.  Underwater robots, called Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs), can swim underwater, controlled by someone up on the ship, and have video cameras that send a TV picture back to the ship. Some big ROVs can go all the way to the bottom of the ocean, but there are also small ones that fit into a suitcase.

However the cameras work, they are very important for bringing back pictures of what is going on in the ocean.

Thanks for our question and I hope you enjoy participation in Dive and Discover.

Larry Madin
Chief Scientist
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

I am in adult education programs in Oregon, at Chemeketa. How do you guys go about catching Salps if they are too fragile to be caught by a net?

Shawn Starr
Salem, Oregon
Chemeketa Community College

Dear Shawn Starr,

We are happy you are looking at the Dive and Discover website and Expedition 10.

Salps don't swim well, so they can't swim away from the net, and they get caught. But they are too fragile to survive if they are caught. They just get smashed together in the narrow end of the net, which is attached to a container, so they collect in the container. They don't fall apart, but they aren't alive. We can still measure how long they are, and how much they have eaten, and how deep they were when we caught them. The best way we have found to catch live salps in good condition is to scuba dive at night, when they are up high enough in the water to catch, and gently put the salps we see into jars, underwater. That way, we can bring them back to the ship and keep them in our aquarium tanks.

Thanks for the great question,
—The salp team

How do you and Larry go scuba-diving in cold Antarctic weather? How can you find food in such ice and snow? What type of gear do you use?

Charles Kemp
Salem, Oregon
Chemeketa Community College

Dear Charles Kemp,
I (Kate) do not go scuba diving, and Larry is not diving on this trip, but we have eight other divers along. They use special suits that keep them dry, and they wear thick long underwear under the drysuit, special hoods for their heads, and several pairs of socks and gloves. The rest of the gear is like normal scuba gear. We will have a "hot topics" about diving in cold water in a few days, so please check back to the web site!

We do not need to find food, because we are on a large ship. The ship brings along a lot of food, and we have four meals a day cooked for us by the ship's cooks.

Thank you for your questions,
Kate Madin, writer

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