14 July, 2004

Rather than use this journal to tell you about one specific science project, I'll fill you in on the day in general and catch you up with a couple of pictures I missed before. The day started for me at 5:30 AM when we were scheduled to get water from the CTD cast. We actually got "on station" (the correct latitude and longitude) around 6:15 and started to collect water shortly after the CTD was back on deck. As Bon van Hardenberg, chief scientist, said, "It's time to milk the sea cow." Since I'm from Vermont, that analogy made perfect sense! While Ari and Rebecca collected water for their work, Alicia and I helped Peter Lee collect nearly 36 bottles of water. Each bottle must be double rinsed with sea water before the water can be collected and stored. Having three pairs of (gloved) hands makes the work go much faster. Peter's biggest problem, however, is the fact that the person who was supposed to come with him was unable, at the last minute, to join the cruise. Since Peter must filter all the water from the CTD bottles AND collect and filter water once each hour while the ship is underway, he essentially has a 24 hour/day job. Because he needs at least some sleep, each of us tries to help out with the underway sampling. I was able to do the morning and early afternoon samples for him and I got a much better appreciation for the work involved. Although it's not difficult, it must be done with care and it must be done every hour that the ship is moving!

In the early afternoon, we stopped to do bongo nets and then to deploy a mooring. Problems with the ship's boom delayed the process for much of the afternoon. Once the first mooring went in, the ship moved a short distance, and Sarah and Bill (I'll fill you in when I have had a chance to speak with them about their work) and members of the crew deployed a second mooring. A CTD cast was set for immediately after the moorings, but it had to go down twice due to problems with the first cast. We just finished collecting water from the CTD, and it is 7:45 PM. All of today's work got done; it just took a bit longer than was planned.

I'll include mooring pictures on the day I describe the process. For today, I've included pictures of the bongo nets and a good picture of the CTD bottle rosette. Remember that the bongo nets are dropped down and then brought up vertically to capture the zooplankton in the water.

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Once all the zooplankton is washed from the nets, these bottles are dumped out. --

The CTD bottle rosette is ready to go into the water. (Photo by Bon van Hardenberg) --

The bongo nets being brought back on board. --

Once the nets come on board, they must be washed down in order to get all the zooplankton into the collecting bottles. --

Two bongo nets are used each time in order to get replicate samples. --