Another unseasonal day on the north Atlantic - sea state 2, wind force 4 but a bit grey. It feels quite warm and I have yet to don my normal field work clobber.
Not at my best at 4am, I had an unusual experience. I went out to the hangar, which opens to the stern, to see if dawn was about to break. No such luck as the sky was leaden and the mist swirled around us. A CTD had just landed on deck but didn’t need servicing so no work for a while. Suddenly I noticed a bright light in the gloomy sky which was moving from left to right and occasionally up and down. I was about to alert those awake to the presence of a UFO when another bright light hove in from the left – the moon! The first light was a star and it was the ship that was moving, not the light. Silly me!
Today Emily Trill, a NOC student, shares her experience of the cruise so far.
My day began at 4am with the ‘Living Dead’ watch. Although this
watch probably includes the most unsociable working hours, I’ve settled into a
routine well and hopefully look less like a zombie than at the start of the
cruise. I don’t even know what time of day it is half the time, so I get to
enjoy the peaceful early hours and the morning skies without too much
disruption to my days.
John B and the CTD at silly o’clock this morning.
We re-joined the Extended Ellett
Line transect during the night, but the stations are deeper and further apart,
resulting in a lot of time between sampling and story time with John Beaton,
Linda Robb and Devin O’Connaill. I’m actually on watch now, but it’ll be a while
before we get to see John B posing with the CTD so seductively again, so I
thought I’d be productive and write my blog and continue the quest for
accommodation in Reykjavik. A word of advice for future Iceland travellers,
don’t leave your accommodation booking to the last minute. Who would’ve thought
that in high season the capital city would be fully booked? At the moment Ollie
and I will be camping, without a tent or sleeping bags. We’ll just have to see
how that one turns out!
Being back on the transect means
taking and preparing samples for Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC) and C13,
which will later be analysed and used in Alex Griffiths dissertation project.
This also meant that I narrowly avoided the isolation booth of the controlled
temperature lab and analysing salinity samples, but who knows for how long!
This cruise experience has been
invaluable, if nothing else it’s good to know that I enjoy the practical side
of the theory I will have spent four years learning. I would recommend to any
prospective oceanographers to get as involved as you can; not only will you
learn a lot, gain priceless work experience, but you’ll also have an awesome time!
We’re on station now, so I’m off to do my CTD duties. Only 34 left to go!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Just about to go to bed when Willie invited a couple of us up to the winch control room to see what happens when a CTD is deployed and recovered. It was great to see it from another angle and all the thought that goes into it. It did mean a later than usual night.
CTD at night
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