A side note- Internet on a boat:

The internet aboard the R/V Melville is actually quite good, though it is limited. Only webmail can be accessed on personal computers, and there are several computers aboard that have more access and may be used by both the crew and the scientists. It is, however, still limited, such that many sites that require lots of processing (ie, youtube) are not available. It also functions most of the time, but there are certain headings where we are not able to get a signal, which can be frustrating...If you have the time to be frustrated, of course!

Busy, Busy!

So I'm somewhere approximately 3/4 of the way through what will likely be an 18 hour shift. There is a lot going on at each of our sampling locations, so I will try to explain some of the procedures, though I may not get to some of the "what are you actually looking fors" til a bit later on. Basically, we need loads of sea water at each depth, at each location. For the casts that I work on, we deploy a CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) sensor, which is fastened to a rosette. On this rosette are 24 10 L bottles that we use for sampling. Each bottle needs to be propped open prior to deployment, and then it takes a team of 3 scientists, a winch driver, a console driver, and a 'restech' (someone who manages the science operations, and we have 2 aboard) to get the rosette in and out of the water. First, the entire system is dropped into the water, taking all relevant profiles using the CTD down to 500 m. Next, on the way up, the rosette stops at various depths so we can manually control the number of bottles we retrieve at various depths, which are designed to give a good overview of the water column, as well as allowing us to focus on depths of interest. Whew, I know all of that is probably hard to digest, so I'll stop here for now!

Starting Out

So as some if not many of you know, I am out to sea for a total of five weeks, off of the coast Pacific Cost of Costa Rica. We are actually more than a week into our voyage, but Kelly and Joaquim have effectively peer-pressured me into making a blog...We have just begun a transect to our second sampling location, and will be en-route for the next few days. During this time we will be stopping every three or four hours to sample in 3 hour time blocks, and I am exhausted just thinking about it. We have had some recent rest since we have been in transit, and have finally picked Joaquim up, so hopefully we are all geared up to go! I'm going to see what we can do about some pictures, but I don't have a cord so I'm going to have to snag one from someone!