The sun has set, the Equator has been crossed, and I find myself sitting in the computer lab for what may end up being my shift’s last CTD cast on the PNE PIRATA 2021 cruise. Although my last post may have made it seem like all we are out here doing is having fun and sitting in pools on the back deck, I did volunteer to help conduct science at sea. And let me tell you – science was CONDUCTED! CTD Sunsets (Photo by Tara Clemente) A research vessel like the Ron Brown is designed to more or less be able to conduct scientific work on a 24 hour a day schedule, so our small team of volunteers working under the ship’s Chief Scientist figured out a watch system. However, unlike the multiple short watches we take when sailing offshore, our watches on this ship are 12 hours – you’re either on the clock or not – and during that time you’re responsible for all of the CTD casts that fall during that shift. My roomie and I were luckily on the same shift – noon to midnight, which seemed easy enough at the beginning of our schedule, but as we hit a region with increased sampling it ended up being really tough! CTD casts are conducted in pretty much the same way every time: open all of the Niskin bottles, turn on all of the sensors, and send the whole rig up and over the side of the ship and down to 1500 meters depth (or nearly a mile deep). As the rosette is pulled back toward the surface, it is stopped at depths that have interesting salinities or oxygen contents. From the comfort of the dry room we can tell the CTD to close an individual bottle on the rosette, thereby taking one water sample at that exact depth. We do this at multiple depths until all of the bottles in the rosette are filled with samples. After taking our samples, the whole apparatus is brought back onto the ship for processing. For each depth sample we fill one fancy glass flask full of water for oxygen titrations and another for measuring the salt content. The Autosal lives in the Salt Dungeon here on the Ron Brown Our team split up the processing of samples and I got to learn how to use an AutoSal. It’s a fancy machine that looks like the technology hasn’t changed since the 1980s, but can tell you what the salinity of your sample is using the conductivity of the water in the chambers. SCIENCE!! The AutoSal on the Ron Brown is located in the room called the Salt Dungeon – an apt and silly name for a room that stays at 24°C ALWAYS, which feels very warm on the otherwise very cool ship. The dungeon part makes sense because when processing samples you can be in there up to 4 hours at a time. On this cruise, our team’s two different watches have conducted 60 CTD samples along 23° West in the middle of the Atlantic. It has been such a wildly different experience from the last research cruise I was on: for one, as we were taking some of our first CTD samples, we were passing by the Cape Verde islands. Standing outside in the dark on the deck watching the lights go by on the horizon was a very foreign feeling – we’d been at sea about 2 weeks, seeing nothing but water and the occasional other ship going by along the horizon. Seeing shore and knowing we still had 4 weeks to go on our ship was a little jarring, especially because it has been relatively easy to forget that the world is still negotiating pandemic-related life, while life onboard is as close to “normal” as anything I can remember in the last year. Because we have had to travel between CTD locations and because we don’t sleep for 12 hours a day, we definitely still have had time to have some fun while on the CTD survey line. As we approached the Equator, someone placed an inflatable pool on the back deck. Although I’ve been on cruise ships before, there is nothing that ever prepared me for the feeling of being in a pool on a ship moving through even more water. A shipmate put the feeling best – it’s kind of like being in a perpetual wave pool. The Ron Brown's Pelagic Pool We also crossed the Equator on this trip – my FIRST TIME crossing the Equator by sea! At the Equator we got to do an extra deep CTD where we sent the rosette to (very close to) the bottom at 3900 meters! The pressure at that depth is immense … and as such we took it upon ourselves to evaluate the pressure using the tried-and-true method of sending Styrofoam to the bottom of the ocean and pulling up a much, much, much smaller piece of Styrofoam than what we sent down (see below). In addition to the Styrofoam, we sent a 2-pack of cinnamon poptarts to the bottom of the ocean to see what would become of them, and then ate the slightly soggy – I mean lightly salted – poptarts once they made their way back to us. Did I stop and taste the water that came from the bottom of the ocean? ABSOLUTELY!!! It tasted … like accidentally taking a mouthful of salt water at the beach. BUT ALL IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE!!!! My styrofoam disk, with my hand for scale! We were in the middle of our CTD survey crossing the Equator the first time, however, upon crossing the Equator the second time we conducted a proper Equator Crossing Ceremony, and I now hold the title Shellback! Looking forward to crossing the Equator by sea in the future as well!
4 Comments
SHIRLEY FRANKEL
2/17/2021 07:00:21 am
I enjoyed reading your blog. I am looking forward to hearing more about your adventures at sea when you return.We miss you.
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Bree
2/17/2021 05:34:21 pm
Hi Grandma! Thanks for reading it! It really means the world! I'm really looking forward to talking more to you once I'm back on shore too - I miss you and Grandpa too!!!
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Joshua Roth
2/17/2021 09:37:26 am
I want to hear about the stars at sea!
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Bree Gibbs, Trash Scientist
2/17/2021 05:33:23 pm
Thanks for this suggestion! I'm really excited to write about this!
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AuthorBree Gibbs, here. I'm a recent Master's Grad just trying to share what it's like to be a trash scientist (for those who aren't in the know, I'm a marine biologist). Categories
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