Journals 2007/2008

Kimberly Pratt
Alvarado Elementary School, Union City, California

"Atlantic Northeast Shelf Ecosystem Monitoring Project NOAA, R/V Delaware II" August 15 - 29, 2007

Journal Index: August 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22            23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 Podcasts Additional Resources

August 19, 2007
Another day at Sea!

Latitude: 38° 21.68' N
Longitude: 74° 32.63' W
Sea Depth: 37 m
Wind Speed: 10 knots
Location: Off the Coast of Delaware Bay
Time: 1405

Greetings! Again 0300 wake up call to do a station first thing. Working in the wee hours is really peaceful, the bioluminescence churning in the waves sparkles like little diamonds. The little bird has still been around, but apparently they do not last long at sea. Today has been more sampling with large sized ctenophores clogging up the net. The nets are also getting clogged with great amounts of phytoplankton, which is a good thing as it means that it is a healthy ecosystem with a lot of life giving phytoplankton. I finished the second podcast today, and due to file size, it will be mailed overnight to my colleague and computer expert extraordinaire' Alisha Valine and she will up load it to the web. Therefore, it will not be published until Thursday or Friday of next week. I also got a chance to interview Navigation Officer, Claire Surrey on the bridge. She stated that while she was a marine biology major in Florida, she realized that she would need to know a lot about ships and decided that NOAA would give her that opportunity. She attended the NOAA Corps training at the Merchant Marine Academy in New York, graduated, and is on her first tour with NOAA. She states that she really enjoys the marine mammal cruises and the only drawback is controlling seasickness. Presently she is the Navigation Officer and spends part of her day tracking and plotting our stations in the Chart Room.

Ensign Claire Surrey