Week One

And now a little bit about life aboard the Ron Brown:

Life at sea is in many ways like camping. Instead of tents we have staterooms. My room is shared with two other scientists on the cruise. Bryan is an physical oceanographer from the joint MIT-Woods Hole graduate program studying small scale changes in the currents. Andrew is an oceanographic modeler from the University of Washington. His job is to control the raising and lowering of the CTD. My role, for those of you who have not heard this before, is to collect samples for DOC analysis. Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is any organic carbon structures in the ocean. It ranges from sugars, amino acids, and DNA to viruses and cell material. Basically, DOC is any small carbon material that is not carbonate (CO2, HCO3, H2CO3...).  I collect water samples from the CTD at all the different depths and freeze them. Back in Miami, the samples will be analyzed for DOC. 

Lowering the CTD into the water to collect samples. On the lower right is my bunk mate, Bryan

So my primary purpose for being on this cruise is the sampling but it doesn't consume my whole day. I sample at every other station which means I sample for about an hour and a half every 12-14 hours. I also have to prepare the sample vials and filters that I use as well as document everything. But that leaves free time in my schedule.

Meals are served three times a day and the food is quite good, especially for being at sea. Part of the reason I equate this cruise to camping is that, when camping, food always tastes better than it really is and I suspect that the food on the cruise is no different. But they have plenty of options and, for now at least, fresh vegetables are available. I also spend some time every day in the gym. Being on a boat, there isn't a lot of room or opportunity to move around and be active. So I've found its important to stay active and exercise when I can. The rest of the time is spent having fun. The crew is very friendly and we often hang out with them. Last night we started a game of monopoly that I am happy to say I was winning before we were interrupted by sampling. The ship also has 740+ movies on board so at the end of the day, some of the science party and I often watch a movie in the lounge. One of my favorite things to do on the cruise is to watch the stars. Out here in the middle of the pacific, the light pollution is effectively 0 and the number of stars you can see is a amazing! When the moon goes down, the you can clearly see that Milky Way and the planets overhead. 

Sunrise on the Brown. Sampling can occur at any time day or night which means I get sights like this. 

On Tuesday, the winds died down and the ocean became amazingly calm. I had the realization that the ocean is really a big bowl of water. I giant, enormous, humongous bowl, but a bowl all the same. Sitting in this flat ocean, it felt like we were just in a cereal bowl. It was strange. 

This image has not been altered at all. The ocean really was this flat. 

We have yet to have any significant weather and we are hoping it stays that way as we continue along 153W. We do expect some storms as we cross into the Gulf of Alaska but the ship is more then capable of deal with them. 

Well I'm off to sample again.

26.5N 152W