The Gulf Stream does not like to reveal its secrets. I had forgotten about that. The last time I was on this ship in this area, I was part of one of the largest deep-sea sampling programs ever, spanning the continental slope and rise along almost the entire U.S. east coast. Back then, everything was new to me, including life in the United States, not to mention life on a U.S. American ship. Now, 25 years later, the excitement right after the arrival of the gear on deck and the first look at the sample is still the same. Today we were sampling off Cape Lookout in about 450 to 2000 m. Strong currents were again trying to make our lives difficult, and we finally had to give up using the USNEL box corer, which is the gear I am most familiar with. I got acquainted with it on my first cruise aboard the Cape Hatteras, and the handling procedures on deck, the way they are done on this ship, came back to me quickly. Most of my time, however, I spent at the dissecting scope in the lab, identifying polychaetes while they are still alive. It is a tedious but peaceful work, and seeing these species again after so many years is like a journey in a time machine. As I write this, the corer is going down to the seafloor again. Maybe by now we have paid our tribute to the Gulf Stream, and it will let us look at some of its finest creatures-bristle worms!