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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Or as my colleague Wade calls it, \u201cTake a Leopard Seal to Lunch Day\u201d.\u00a0 (The image is of a sticker that I bought at Palmer Station \u2013 oceanographers can have a warped sense of humor.)\u00a0 But, since we are in the Antarctic, I should say something about penguins.\u00a0 They are amusing to watch.\u00a0 Clumsy on land but amazing acrobats in the water.\u00a0 The belly-slide is a more effective way for them to travel on snow than walking. \u00a0They are extremely curious, to the point of being pests.\u00a0 On my first trip down here, the ship was in ice the entire time because the lead research group was studying sea ice.\u00a0 Every day they\u2019d lay out a measuring line for their ice coring transect, pinning it down with small metal stakes.\u00a0 And then the penguins would show up (the Adelies) to inspect the job and pull out a bunch of the stakes.\u00a0 They are the squirrels of the Antarctic.\u00a0 That\u2019s about all I know regarding penguins \u2013 you can certainly find out more through the internet (or a book), as well as find some really cute pictures and funny videos.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also my brother\u2019s birthday today, so before I go any further I\u2019d like to say<\/p>\n
(Sorry, I forgot to send a card before I left.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A few days have gone by since the last post.\u00a0 It all started out well \u2013 on Monday the divers did their checkout dives at Palmer Station.\u00a0 The picture below is of our chief scientist Chuck Amsler (all black dive suit – there is an island named in his honor near the station) and Aaron Galloway (neon green dive suit) exiting the water.\u00a0 We left the dock just before dinner and headed to the first site where we would collect water and the divers would collect macroalgae for their project. \u00a0Finally we would begin working on our project!\u00a0 Unfortunately, there was a major glitch \u2013 the CTD failed on its first cast Tuesday morning.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t repairable and there isn\u2019t a spare onboard this ship.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2019\/04\/divers_walking-300x225.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The CTD is an instrument package that attaches to a large frame (called a rosette \u2013 it\u2019s round) that holds large bottles (called Niskin bottles) that can be triggered to shut from the ship.\u00a0 CTD stands for conductivity\/temperature\/depth, which are the primary water conditions that the instrument it measures.\u00a0 We added a fluorometer to the group so that we could measure fluorescence in the water \u2013 which is used as a proxy for microalgal abundance.\u00a0 Using this information gathered by the instrument on its way down through the water column, we decide at what depth we want to collect water samples, which is done as the instrument comes back to the surface.\u00a0 All of our experiments require seawater, and while we could<\/em> get surface water with a bucket, we are also interested in deeper water \u2013 the deep fluorescence maximum in particular.\u00a0 Without a functional CTD, it was looking pretty bleak for our project.<\/p>\n We headed on to the next dive site, ending up in lousy weather that kept the divers out of the water.\u00a0 Wednesday was spent brainstorming different ideas, and there were many, but ultimately it was decided that we would head back to Palmer Station and borrow their smaller instrument.\u00a0 And that\u2019s where we are now (Thursday morning) \u2013 we\u2019ve picked up the CTD and it is being attached to the winch wire for a test deployment.\u00a0 In the picture below you can see the two rosettes side-by-side.\u00a0 On the left is the original CTD (which decided it didn\u2019t want to cooperate for this cruise) and on the right is the borrowed one.\u00a0 There is a definitely a difference in the amount of water that we can collect on each cast, and we\u2019ll likely need to do multiple casts to get what we need, but it\u2019s a much better alternative than a bucket (we have 2 of those \u2013 just in case).<\/p>\n And, I\u2019d like to be serious for a moment.\u00a0 At sea we always seem to be modifying or adapting something, but when major issues like this occur (and they do), it requires a big team effort to make it right. \u00a0I\u2019m not going to try to name the folks involved because I\u2019ll inevitably forget to include someone \u2013 but if you were a part of helping to solve this problem, please know that we are very, very grateful.<\/p>\n Or as my colleague Wade calls it, \u201cTake a Leopard Seal to Lunch Day\u201d.\u00a0 (The image is of a sticker that I bought at Palmer Station \u2013 oceanographers can have a warped sense of humor.)\u00a0 But, since we are in the Antarctic, I should say something about penguins.\u00a0 They are amusing to watch.\u00a0 Clumsy on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/staff\/rgast\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2019\/04\/IMG_1535-300x225.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTHANK YOU!<\/strong><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"