Journals 2004/2005

Laurelynn Brooks
Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon, Washington

"Investigating the link between alkenones and sea surface temperature" R/V New Horizon July 5-23, 2004

Journal Index: July 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12       13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19       20 - 21 - 22 - 23

July 18, 2004
Hypothesizing

After only three hours of sleep, Ida and I are up again to deploy the CTD at midnight! We are surprised to see only Terri, Richard, Greg and Jeremy in the lab at the computer. Our Big Kahunas, Fred and Brian, are missing, still sleeping. We debate about waking them, but decide to take the controls, radio the winch team and launch the CTD ourselves. We are very proud as we run the show and discover a unique pattern in the CTD profile. The CTD has reported an extreme layer of oxygen saturation. We know that Fred would want to see this, so we send Ida to bang on his door, since she is his grad student and we love to tease her. Fred staggers into the lab and the profile appears to wake him up.

It is fun to hypothesize why there is so much oxygen in this layer. We think there must be lots of photosynthesis and therefore, lots of plants. We retrieve the CTD and crash until lunch. (I was so tired that the only note that I wrote in my journal was: Deployed CTD at 0000, Big Kahunas sleeping.)