This is the second of our biweekly reports from the GYRE. We have now finished our faunal survey of 8 different sites. These sites have included basins and adjacent non-basin slope locations. This work is to test our hypothesis that the basins are different from the rest of the continental slope. A total of 82 activities have been logged to date. We are averaging about one site per day, as expected.

The most notable happening is the disappointing if not tragic loss of our CTD and 24 bottle rosette sampler, along with a pinger that is vital to some of our other operations. This occurred at B3 in the Vaca Basin. We have now moved the backup CTD with 12 bottle rosette into place and are continuing our hydrographic casts with it.

A new replacement pinger has been arranged for and we have plans to pick it up from a crew boat early Saturday morning. I will provide more details on this operation later as specific plans materialize.

The trawling and box coring continue to go well. The trawl samples are highly diverse, although sparce in biomass, as might be expected. Dominant forms are sea stars, sea pens, anemones and sea cucumbers typical of the depths at which we have been working (ca. 2 km). Fish, although less abundant, are also being sampled effectively, and are composed of the species we would expect at these depths.

The amount of "trash" we are getting in the trawl continues to amaze us. We are keeping as much of it as we can and tabulating it all, at least qualitatively.

Digital images are being sent to GERG daily for updating the web site.

Detailed topography and GERGNAV are being used in semi-real time to coordinate sampling around each site. The detailed topography is taken directly from the slope data provided by Bill Bryant for this project.

Attempts will be made to make up 'lost' samples later in the cruise, as time permits.