30 November, 2000

Greetings,

Yesterday I posted the following questions. What do you think happens to the temperature of water as you go deeper into the water column? What do you think happens to the salinity (saltiness of water) of water with depth? Below you will see a graph of our data. This data was from our cast of the CTD. Temperature is in red and salinity or saltiness is in black. If you look at the graph of water temperature you see that the surface is at 0.15 degrees Celsius. As you go deeper the water becomes colder to about 22 meters. After that the water begins to warm slowly as you get deeper. Salinity is almost the opposite of the temperature graph. It's less salty at the surface and gets saltier the deeper you go.

Send me your answers to the following questions or ask your own question. 1. Why do you think water gets warmer after the first twenty-five meters? 2. Why is the water less salty at the surface as compared to water at depth? 3. How far down does the visible light from the sun penetrate the ocean surface?

4. How deep do phytoplankton species grow?

Today I went out on a zodiac with Kirk Ireson, Wendy Kozlowski and Sylvia Rodriguez. They were busy collecting water samples, phytoplankton, irradiance with depth and salinity temperature and depth at station B. I always enjoy seeing them collect water because it means I get to run more chlorophyll samples. It was very interesting to see how they collected water at depth. They use a bottle called a GO bottle. It sort of looks like a pipe with lids at both ends and a few springs. You attach a GO bottle to your winch line with the first bottle collecting at the deepest depth. The bottle is open at both ends when it goes in the water. So as it passes through the water column the water passes through the bottle. When you are ready to collect you drop a weight along your wench line. This triggers the first bottle to close and release a weight on the first bottle to trigger the second bottle. It's ingenious.

While we were out at station B a Gentoo penguin came swimming up to the zodiac to say hello. It wasn't long after that we headed for palmer station to filter the water and download the data. Make sure you stop by tomorrow for more pictures, stories and science from the teacher guy. Tomorrow a ship is supposed to visit us in the morning.

C-Ya,

-- Bill

PS -- Happy Birthday Sue. I have been thinking about you all day. A brother couldn't have a better sister. Even one that doesn't use her e-mail. :-)

Temperature and salinity graph using the CTD.

A Gentoo penguin stops to see what were doing.

Wendy and Sylvia getting ready to deploy the CTD.

Wendy with a GO bottle.