Dispatch 18: We're on the BL Line!
Ashley Arroyo (Yale University)
September 16, 2024
13:00 UTC, 71.95°N 150.29°W
Conditions:
- Foggy
- 0% sea ice cover
- 5°C
- Winds 12 knots northeasterly
- Sunrise: 16-Sep-2024 09:15:06 -06
- Sunset: 16-Sep-2024 22:39:19 -06
We reached the beginning of the “BL Line” (the group of coastal CTD/bongo stations near the Alaskan coast, see our last dispatch here for more info) around lunchtime today, when we arrived at station BL-8. This station had a bottom depth of ~3000-meters. As we continued down the line of stations and onto the continental slope, the bottom depths became increasingly shallow – the last station (BL-1) was only about 70-meters deep!
Once we arrived at a station, we would deploy the rosette, complete the cast, and then recover the rosette. Once the rosette was back on board, the Captain and mates would then maneuver the Louis to our next position and let us know when we were able to begin the next cast. In the meantime, we began sampling as soon as the rosette was secured. Once the water sampling was complete, geochemical analysts began filtering and analyzing samples including nutrients, chlorophyll, ammonium, and organic matter – it was a huge team effort! We completed about half of the stations on the BL Line by midnight when the nighttime watch-standers took over. We anticipate finishing up with the last station of the line, BL-1 by around lunchtime tomorrow. Until then, cast, bongo, sample, transit, REPEAT!
