Plankton!!!!

Okay.
So we didn't start off with super exciting 20-foot sharks. We got started with the itty-bitty-tiny stuff: Plankton.
Plankton by definition is tiny stuff that can't actively swim - they kinda drift around, float from here to there, go with the flow. Catching phytoplankton though can be a bit more challenging that you think. It involves big nets with a very fine mesh size. Because the usual phytoplankton people had a bit more to do with the whole oil-spill drama down here in the Gulf, the shark people were helping them out by picking up the last few of their usual stations.
After we'd sailed to a station we would first through a big, long net attached to a square metal frame over board to collect Neuston (stuff that lives a the air-water interface) by dragging it just under the surface. After 10 minutes we pull it back up. The net is formed like a pyramide with a filter-tube on the bottom - we hose down the net to make sure everything gets stuck in there.
Then we prep the "bongos". It's to big circular wooden frames with long net-hoses attached to them, again with a filter-tube thingie on the bottom to catch everything. We drop those and the pull them out as well.
Once we've got all of that we go to the back of the ship were we filter out the water and put all the "goodies" into jars - of course everything gets carefully labeled. The plankton stuff is mostly just green gook. The Neuson can have teeny-tiny crabs and fish (we're talking the fraction of a size of your fingernail). Before we close the jars we add some formaldehyde to preserve everything (later it will be transferred to ethanol).
I was holding up one of the more "exciting" jars checking out the contents. When I realized some poor grad (or more likely undergrad) is going to spend hours if not days identifying all this stuff under a micrsoscope.
Well, I hope they have fun with that. I'll be content to stay on a boat!