On Monday the 26th of June, we set out on a three-day cruise. The goal of the cruise was to tag Mahi mahi and to try to keep certain sized ones, in these large blue containers (below), alive for 24 hours before releasing them. The scientists measured them and recorded the sex. The dead ones or the ones not within the size range they were trying to catch were dissected and further analyzed.
The mahi were caught with fishing poles trolling behind the vessel and from a smaller fishing boat (as is in the picture to the right).
If the smaller boat caught one, the team on the Walton Smith would attach a tennis ball to a fishing pole and cast this ball to the smaller fishing boat. The team on the smaller fishing boat would then attach this line to the line they had caught a fish with, so that the Walton Smith team could then reel the fish in to them.
I helped mount the side pole on the port side of the Walton Smith ( picture below). 
This pole had a vacuum on it that sucked in water that would fill the containers the fish were put in. Dennis, the marine technician, and myself would also deploy a carousel with nisken bottles and a CTD on it every evening for each of the three days. On this cruise, the scientists were mostly just catching fish, so there was some free time available for me. During this time, I learned to replace RJ45 (ethernet) connectors (picture below) that had become damaged on various CAT5 cables and learned about serial and ethernet communications.
Most of the fish were caught from the smaller boat and transferred to the Walton Smith. The fish were caught mostly between 0800 through 1600. We stayed in the Straits of Florida for most of the cruise. The water was very calm – I did not get sea sick at all and felt fine the whole time!
On Wednesday the 28, we returned from the cruise. For the following couple of days at the dock, I did the following: set up RS232 connections from the tech lab to a computer on in the dry lab for the next cruise, put together a tv antennae and wired it from atop the bridge into the mess area’s tv, learned how to crimp coaxial cables, prepared for the next cruise by bringing the bottom grab on the boat, and helped clean up around the vessel.
I am very grateful to Dennis for teaching me more about being a marine technician and for giving me an active role in assisting him. I learned some helpful tricks and skills that should come in handy down the road. I look forward to the next cruise, which starts on the 8th of July and goes to the 13th.