things I learned today

Beaufort scale- we're somewhere around a 6 or 7. Which is apparently too high to safely cast the rosette. So my watch tonight consisted of getting dressed, walking out onto the aft deck, and being called back in by the voice on high.

row row row your boat

Today the sea is much rougher. I was fairly pleased with myself this morning when there were only 3 other scientists (out of 16) vertical and I was feeling good. That feeling of smugness passed when I suddenly had to run out into the breeze to calm my head down. I found that if I just lay down for a few minutes when my head starts to spin I'll be ok.

I tried to take a few pictures showing how much the boat is rocking but am not sure if they're going to do a very good job demonstrating that. I haven't seen any numbers about the height of the swells, but I'll guess somewhere around 8-10 feet.

We hit another couple minor stations today (only on that I sample). Both times there was quite a bit of discussion trying to decided if it was too rough to deploy the rosette or not. Both stations were a go, but the crew recaptured the last one instead of us scientists catching it. (random aside-the rosette weighs just under 1000 lbs empty and over a ton full of water) I'm on science watch now but didn't have much to do at the last station since the crew caught the rosette and the next station isn't for a couple more hours. I think I'll take a nap.

one major, one minor down

internet is kind of sketchy. so I'll just say that I've filtered a lot of water and am in general very tired. we'll get to the next minor station (that I have to sample) tomorrow around 8. So far I haven't been sea sick, hopefully that will continue. I also hope that tomorrow will go smoother-although considering that I have no idea what I'm doing, today went pretty well.

filtered water, didn't fall overboard, didn't puke.

Practicing my aaarrrrrrggggggg

I'm on board the ship. Loading was a bit of a gong show which I guess is to be expected. The gov't scientists have a containerized lab, so we had to wait a while for the crane to get that loaded. We were the first group of uni scientist to get our stuff onboard after that though so shouldn't complain.

The lab is huge-actually for that matter our cabin is huge too. One of my PI's and a grad student from the other lab came over with us to help set up. I was able to help some but mostly talked to the PI about how everything works and is hooked up. We have the mass spec set up and running-very fancy. This is a totally different world of field science as I've ever done so should be interesting. Amazing how much crap is necessary when you're not limited to what will fit in a backpack.

I haven't taken any pictures but will try to tomorrow before we head out. As long as we're docked I can up load images but after that none till we get back.

Track Thermophile's progress...

Here's a link for tracking the ship updated every 3 hours.

New Blog, New Job

I've been threatening to start a blog for a while now; the eve of my first scientific cruise seemed like the perfect occasion. There will be email access for most of the cruise so I'll try to post a bit every day. We'll be collecting water to look at the microbial community and some geochemistry along this transect.