Meanwhile, science continues

By Mark Moore

Around the drama of Wednesday afternoon (see Lucie’s recent blogpost), the science on board continues apace. Over the 5 intensive days of science to date we have already completed 72 ‘Events’ each of which effectively corresponds to a deployment of one of the many pieces of equipment which you may have read about during previous log entries, including deployments of moorings and gliders, CTDs, net sampling (see picture below) alongside snow catchers, in situ pumping systems, etc, etc ....  

Picture: The ongoing event log in the main laboratory
Others: A CTD coming on deck
Net sampling
Mooring deployments
A glider being ballasted on board before being deployed

With all this activity occurring on board it is important that we keep detailed, accurate and up to date records. The first stage in making sure everyone knows where we are with planned activities is a running event log which we keep in the main lab of the ship (see picture). Here we provide a rough record of what has happened to date, allowing the person leading the next activity to confirm the event number and providing a record for checking against more detailed logs. Simultaneously the officers on watch also keep a separate ongoing record of all activities from up on the bridge. One of my jobs as principal scientist then involves keeping a check to make sure that all these logs are aligned. It pays to have multiple redundancy as although a research ship is a reasonably small space, with everyone working in different areas of the ship and at different times of the day and night effective communications can sometimes still be a challenge!

Work wise we are currently around half way through another of our CTD (Picture) sampling transects down the shelf edge aimed at understanding the processes by which iron (Fe) may be transported off the shelf. Working where the water depth shoals so steeply has its own challenges. We have to be extra careful lowering sampling equipment near to the bottom as there are regions of the shelf break where the water depth can change by 1000m in under a km, i.e. a >45% slope!