We see an occasional ship out here. They are mostly container ships or tankers such as this one that passed by yesterday. (Photo by Kathy Hardy)
Partly due to the lack of phytoplankton, the water at PAPA is an azure blue. It is also cold! Only 40 degrees Fahrenheit. (Photo by Kathy Hardy)
OCEAN STATION P, NORTH PACIFIC (May 27, 07): We started our first incubations at
PAPA yesterday. The nutrient levels are really high here, but because of the shortage of iron, not much grows in the water. We periodically dip a net over the side to catch phytoplankton. Our net samples show that they are here but none present in large numbers.
Pseudo-nitzchia is apparent in the net tow. Partly because of the low numbers of phytoplankton, the water is an azure shade of blue that I have never seen in Maine. It looks a bit like tropical water, though not exactly.
In the morning a pair of
Dall’s Porpoises were speeding back and forth along the starboard side of the ship. They have a very distinctive dark gray and white coloration. I wasn’t able to capture a picture of high enough quality for the web. They came back in the afternoon, but I was stuck at the filtration rig and missed them.
The sun actually poked through the cloud cover for a few minutes, I finished the filtrations in time to step out on deck and watch the gray skies return. I can discern a pattern in the weather at PAPA: fog, mist, clouds, rain, a few rays of sun, a patch of blue sky, fog, mist, clouds, rain, a few rays of sun, a patch of blue sky… Now that I think about it, not so different from May in Maine. Of course without the black flies. And without the trees and the flowers and the green grass.
It is actually pretty warm out here, surprising for being so far north this time of year. We are at between 50° and 51°N lattitude which on the East Coast is at the top of Newfoundland and the air temperature is still 50-60°F during the day.
We have basically been going in large circles collecting water for various experiments from the "fish".
In the afternoon one of the other scientists alerted me to a tanker going by on our port side. I was a little surprised to see another ship out here. But, Robert, the Chief Mate says we aren't that far from the shipping lanes.
Today, I spent 12 hours in the clean room "bubble". I was setting up the stable isotope experiment that I mentioned earlier. There were some swells and the ship took a few good rolls while I was in there. My bottles and solutions went sliding. It’s a bit of a challenge to pipette a chemical addition into a bottle when it is sliding by like a drink across a bar.
Also, it’s tiring to be in the bubble all day; there are three huge HEPA filters running all the time which is noisy and with the motion of the ship and the fact that most of the work can’t be done sitting down, a day of work in there can seem like two or three. At least today some other people were in and out, LeAnn and Tracey, and Eric and Morgan were all working at various times in the bubble. Morgan is an undergraduate at UM who is joining us on this cruise and has really helped out a lot.
The weather is... you guessed it! Overcast, damp, foggy, misty and gray.
Charlie Trick is one of the Professors whose lab is participating in this cruise. He grew up in Cuiahoga, Ohio, which he says is famous for having its river catch on fire in 1968. Gotta love the sixties. He is at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. He and
Mark Wells are the masterminds of the incubation experiments and both have graduate students on the ship.
Charlie and I first sailed together several years ago. On that cruise, we were working in the radiation van with
radioactive iron-59. He was showing me how to do filtrations of the radioisotope and I was a nervous wreck. I hate working with iron-59. Particularly when the radiation van is rolling. At one point, the hose that carried the isotope waste came loose and the isotope spilled on my boot. Fortunately I was wearing rubber boots. I can remember Charlie on his knees washing off my boots with radiation decontaminant. I think I made him do it three times.
In addition to being a successful scientist and a great shoeshine, Charlie is an all around good guy. When Peggy and I need an extra hand he is always willing to help out. He was helping me carry the forty or so bottles from the experiment that I set up today out to the incubator on the fantail, when a fire alarm went off. I was pretty sure it was not a real emergency, because the fire alarms on the ship are really sensitive and go off if someone showers without closing the bathroom door. When an alarm goes off, we all go to our cabins, grab our survival gear and muster in the main lab. Charlie said, “Go get your gear!” and grabbed the bucket of bottles that I was carrying. By the time I got my gear and arrived back in the lab, Charlie was already back with his own gear. Somehow he had put my bottles in the incubator, secured it, ran and grabbed his gear from his cabin and made it back to the lab before me which was quite a feat considering that his cabin is next to mine!
Besides having superhuman speed and being very helpful, Charlie is involved in a lot of really cool research; things you wouldn’t expect an oceanographer to do. He is chair of a program called
Ecosystem Health. The idea being that human health and ecosystem health are integral. A healthy environment creates healthy people who create a healthy environment. He is involved in projects ranging from mercury contamination studies and developing clean water technology for First Nation (the Canadian equivalent to our term "Native American") tribes to a project in Tanzania that has enabled women there to start a yogurt making business which provides healthy food and income for their families.
Charlie is not your typical marine scientist, that's for sure.
Another day down. Most of the time out here I have no idea what day of the week it is because it really doesn’t matter. Every day is the same. So, essentially we work for 30 days straight. And unfortunately, I do not get overtime pay. Instead, I get comp time. I usually take a month off after a cruise. But this year I am thinking maybe the month of August...
The ship is operating under heavy weather rules. (Photo by Kathy Hardy)
View from the bridge. Conditions have calmed from last night's 50 mph winds and 18-20-foot seas, but are still formidable. The storm was the result of 2 low pressure systems coming together in the north Pacific; we got out of Station P just in time. (Photo by Kathy Hardy)
I snapped this shot of the crest of a large wave going by my cabin porthole on the 01 deck (the deck above the main weather deck). (Photo by Kathy Hardy)
The storm is generating some pretty big swells. That, combined with the speed of the ship and the heading we are on, meant that few on board slept well last night. (Photo by Kathy Hardy)
The ship is rolling so badly that walking is tricky business. (Photo by Kathy Hardy)
