I trust the crew is not running around with parrots on their shoulders, growling "argh!" and "avast, me hardies." But who comprises these Harbor Branch researchers? Are they of local origin or from all around the world? How many trips asea does the Harbor Branch take in, say a year? Do they stay close to the Florida coast or are they farther out in the deeper regions of the Atlantic?
And finally, do you SCUBA?

7:50:22 p.m. on June 5, 2006
DAVID MELLOCH | 06.05.06 - 7:55 pm | # |Report as offensive

More Answers from Jan at Harbor Branch.

The crew is a motley bunch, but Harbor Branch has a "no pets" policy, especially parrots given the risk that the crew might transmit bird flu to otherwise healthy parrots. Some crew members have tatoos of parrots and others have mounted stuffed parrots on their shoulders, but no live parrots are allowed. Pirate talk is discouraged because of the limited vocabulary (I think you quoted the entire vocabulary in your question). Pirate-speak just doesn't lend itself well to describing the position of the submersible, giving GPS coordinates, deploying sensitive and expensive equipment overboard, and describing the morphologies of newly discovered species.

Actually, all kidding aside, the ship's crew is of the highest caliber, the sub crew is stellar because everyone is there to support sensitive scientific experiments that have to come out right the first time. There is very little room for error and therefore no time for do-overs. A crew of rum-soaked, one-eyed, peg-legged desperados just would not cut it here.

The scientists on this cruise are mostly from Harbor Branch, but they have also invited colleagues from other research institutions and state and federal agencies. Participating in the expedition are scientists from the NOAA Undersea Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Ft. Pierce, the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Miami, the University of Oregon's Institute of Marine Biology in Charleston, the Florida Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg, and the Vero Beach-based Estuarine, Coastal and Ocean Science, Inc. (ECOS), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Harbor Branch's ship and subs are capable of operating just about anywhere in the world. To see where we've been, go to our web site http://www.hboi.edu or visit our Expeditions web site http://www.at-sea.org . Suffice it to say that we have been to the Galapagos Islands, the Horn of Africa, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. We operate in the Bahamas and along the East Coast from Maine to Florida and in the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Texas.

4:51:25 p.m. on June 6, 2006
JAN PETRI | 06.06.06 - 4:56 pm | # |Report as offensive