Leslie Harris is our sponsor from the Natural History Museum, getting us our great meeting room. She has worked with the Museum's polychaete collection since 1988. Ms Harris is an eminent authority on the marine flora and fauna of California, and has been instrumental in the acquisition of major private polychaete collections for the museum. She is one of the founders of the Southern California Association of Marine Invertebrate Taxonomists.

From Leslie:

I'm off on a research cruise to the northwest Hawai'ian islands.  This is the area recently designated as a national monument & placed out of bounds.  It's not only no take, it's no visit as well.  Our study will focus on the small inverts associated with coral reefs which are pretty much ignored in favor of the bigger or charismatic animals.  Nearly all studies look at vertebrates, corals, fish, large crusties & shellies.  You know, the boring stuff..... 

My job will be to live sort & photograph the small stuff.  Perfect excuse to get a new camera!  And it's tax deductible, too.   In the last two weeks I've bought a canon 5D, canon 100 macro, a very specialized lens called the canon MPE 65 which only focuses at 1X-5X, a Sigma 24-70 (had to save money somewhere), canon's macro twin-light, plus a focusing rail, microscope adapter, and all the usual paraphenalia you need with a completely new outfit.  I also needed to get a sturdy repro stand but I ran out of money; fortunately I was able to borrow one for the cruise.  Last item was industrial rubber dampening pads to counteract the constant vibration from the ship.  Matt Segal was nice enough to come over for a few hours to introduce me to the wonderful new world of Canon as opposed to my previous nikons & sony.

We were fortunate to get a permit.  Research there is very tightly regulated.  I leave for Honolulu on saturday to help with the prep & loading (I'm in charge of the shipboard lab); the ship leaves port on 6 Oct & returns on 28 Oct; I stay for another couple of days to help with the aftermath.  Ship's crew is about 20 with about 20 scientists.  There's a big educational component as well.  We'll have some education/outreach specialists producing daily web updates & streaming podcasts.  The 3 sites are:
http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/missions/welcome.html
http://www.hawaiianatolls.org
http://www.creefs.org (will be up and running by the start of the cruise)