Alls well that

We put all the samples in the freezer last night, leaving the remainder of the clean up for this morning and throughout the rest of the day. We have a lot of presumably good samples and will be spending the next few months analyzing them. They should make it easy to establish a baseline in case drilling does in fact begin off the coast. It may be a while before I catch up on sleep between research and catching up on grading of oceanography homework to fullfill my TA duties.

Thanks for reading my blog and I'll keep everyone updated every few weeks on our analysis and prospects for any future cruises I may go on.

Regaining our land legs

I got some sleep and woke up about half an hour out of port. We've got most everything off the boat, making sure it is mostly cleaned up for the next research group that will be taking it out. It's only been a week, but I'm looking forward to getting back to UNC after the roughly four hour drive (and maybe another stop at Wilburs.

Last day for research!

The water column group finished up their sampling yesterday leaving it to us seabedders to finish up all of our sampling before we leave at midnight tonight. I'm essentially doing double duty, so after I finish my lunch of salisbury steak, I'll be going back to processing sediment samples.

Back in the Saddle

Today, the winds dropped and the weather cleared up, so we're back to work like before. We collected 10 cores (both box and Kasten). I'm too busy to update the blog much, but I did take a picture of an atlantic puffin that must have been blown into our area by the storm. Enjoy!

Courtesy blog.thomaslaupstad.com

Stormy waters

I awoke to heavy rain and high winds (about a 6 on the Beaufort scale, which is just short of gale levels). We tried taking some cores, but it quickly became obvious that our cores would mostly pretrigger or bounce off the bottom, making any attempts futile.

We took the day off and spent our time watching DVDs.

In case your interested:
Cape Fear, C
Jaws, A-
Perfect storm, B
Harry Potter, A

The rest of the time was spent tidying up our samples and catching up on sleep.

Shiver me timbers

The wind is starting to pick up meaning larger waves and choppier seas. Some of the cores are pre-triggering from pressure on the lines, but we still had moderate success collecting enough cores to keep me doing something. Problems related to high winds and larger waves also kept the group working on the water column from getting much done.

The barometric pressure is dropping, the sky is cloudy and the forecast for tomorrow doesn't look good. Having good weather for 9 days straight is generally too much to wish for, so I'm not too concerned about having a day of bad weather. Perhaps we'll still get some work done.

The Hustle Group

We played catch-up today taking up most of the winch time for coring. We've got a dozen cores, meaning a lot of processing for me. Luckily, all my good karma from helping others before means that other people are now helping me out.

As I finish this post, I'm already going into tomorrow and am set to go to work in 20 minutes.

After all, tomorrow is another day!

Our first cores came in today giving me plenty to do. My work is pretty unglamorous, involving the division of sediment which is labeled, bagged and frozen. On some samples I also squeeze the water from sediment to be analyzed later. Sounds simple but the samples must be meticulously processed so that analyzing them when we get back to UNC will go smoothly. Keeping everything tidy is also important.

Our sediment porewater processing set-up

The weathers looking good for today and our technical failures appear solved, so hopefully we'll have several more cores on the next shift.

My piecemeal sleep schedule is already starting to catch up to me. We had a mandatory safety drill last night at 7 to go over all of the ship's policies, a time when I could normally have been sleeping. But, in my downtime, good food and swapping stories of past cruises with some of the older researchers has kept my morale high.

Much Ado About Nothing

We arrived at the station around eight and began trying to take samples. I say trying because our attempts to take core samples have so far been unsuccessful due to gear problems. The on-board technician and engineers are currently working on fixing the problem. Hopefully we won't lose much time when we could be coring.

I had a light shift for me today since I'll normally work midnight to noon, but started at 8. However, like on any research vessel, I'm working more than my assigned shift to help out wherever possible. Everyone working on water column stuff -- CTD (conductivity, temperature, and depth) tests, taking water and plankton samples -- have had a successful day, so I've been helping process their samples whenever they need an extra hand.

A CTD sensor and Water Sampling Bottles

The weather's been good so far, hopefully we'll have better luck coring tomorrow.

The First of Many Long Days

Packing for the trip started at 6 a.m. with us loading roughly 100 crates, weights, gas tanks, and other odds and ends into vans. The Duke contingent of researchers arriving from Durham around 7 a.m. to help out. Most of the materials had been packed over the past week and checked over multiple times, so that we didn't forget any equipment. That pretty much left a lot of heavy lifting to get everything in the half a dozen vans.

We were on the road by 10 a.m. and soon arrived at Goldboro for a much needed lunch break. Spirits were very high thanks to the good barbecue at Wilburs and we got a chance to get to know the Duke scientists a little better. Everyone is excited to escape their offices, labs, and TA duties for the next 10 days to get out and do some research.

We get to the dock near Beaufort around 2 and begin the unpacking process. Half of us unload while the other half aboard the ship begin lashing down the gear to keep it from moving while we're out at sea. After dinner, everything is on board and tied down, lab set up begins. The ship left port at eight as we continued to prepare for the samples we'll begin taking at the station tomorrow.

I need to get some sleep since I've been assigned to the midnight to noon shift throughout the trip, so I will begin processing samples tomorrow morning when we reach the station. I get the first stint in my bunk, which I'll be sharing with another scientist, my fellow UNC Ph.D candidate Sanjay Kapadia, who is on the noon to midnight shift. I need to be out of my bunk by 4:30 a.m. to ensure he too can get enough sleep.