Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July! And happy birthday Laura if you actually read this...We had a nice day (unfortunately, there are no long weekends at sea)that ended with a "patriotic 'demonstration'" which included smoke bombs and a series of flares once it got dark (I got to set one off!). Because of all of the holiday spirit, I figured I would enlighten you to some of the revelations I've had/skills I have learned on a boat.
1. The most useful (and subsequently most desirable)thing to bring aboard a research cruise is definitely a bean-bad chair.
2. How to play cribbage
3. How to tie a stellar bowline knot
That's all for know, got to get to work!

Happy 4th of July weekend to everyone! And happy almost birthday, Laura! So we have finally finished our transect and will be beginning cycles at midnight (so, I'm back on the 2:00am shift as opposed being on 4 casts a day around the clock...) We were able to get some rest today, which was nice. Gotta go run some samples, and maybe get a nap in!

I saw dolphins yesterday! They like to ride the bow waves and were jumping all over the place when we were moving. Hopefully I'll get to see some other cool wildlife, there have been a few sea turtle sightings, but every time someone says they see something cool, I miss it or can't see it, story of my life! Anyway, time here is a strange concept...we work in hours, but those don't really seem to translate into days. Since "day" and "night" have effectively become irrelevant, the only thing that matters at this point is when we reach a new station, no matter if it's light or dark. I didn't even know it was Friday until someone happened to mention it a few hours ago. Crazy!

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!