Russ Vetter, Leg III SHARK CRUISE. One of the great pleasures of being at sea is watching the march of time. When I sailed on July 9th, we were greeted by a sliver of crescent moon in the evening sky with Venus nested in the crescent. Each night the moon rises about one hour later and we are now approaching full moon. Each morning we rise at 4:30 to get the CTD in the water at 5:00 and we are greeted by the first hints of dawn. Rarely is it possible to focus on the rhythms of the universe when engaged in modern life on land.

Today’s photo shows one of the oddest critters in the sea, the mola mola or ocean sunfish. These fish can grow to more than 1,000 pounds and are really quite common out here. We generally see them every day. They appear to be just a giant head with large eyes, no tail, and two giant fins, one on the top and one on the bottom. They typically float around and eat jelly fish. It is a wonder that they survive at all, let alone gather enough food to reach such immense size. Half the time they swim upright and half the time they are on their sides. Often they swim with a fin out of the water just to trick the volunteers into yelling “shark!!”. Last year we captured three during our shark cruise, and Heidi Dewar, a member of our NOAA group and the TOPP shark tagging team, was able to successfully put satellite tags on all three. ABOARD THE DAVID STARR JORDAN, Off San Diego, California.