April 23 2008
April 23 2008
Today we have been transiting between sites, which means we have no more samples from today. However, we have several hundred fossil corals to pack up for safe transportation back to the US and many live corals in the aquarium rooms to process and preserve! This has meant drying and weighing the fossil samples, and lots of playing with packing foam!
A day on board with Kate Hendry:
The Principal Investigators
Kathy Scanlon tears strips of the mountain of packing foam
Superstar photographer, Dann Blackwood
I’m Kate, and I’m a research scientist aboard the Palmer on cruise NBP08-05. I’m here to carry out geochemical research, studying the chemistry of deep sea organisms, but my days have been filled with a huge variety of activities. I thought I’d tell you about my last 24 hours, which corresponds roughly to April 23rd back at my home in the UK.
Yesterday morning, at about 7 am, a trawl came up to the surface from 800 m depth. We had all been sitting around very anxiously watching the screen that shows the amount of line left to reel in and the tension on the wire. After the trawl had come up from the seafloor, the tension had suddenly dropped – a sure sign that the trawl failed or worse, the net had broken. So, we all watched grim faced out on deck, kitted out in our flotation coats and hard hats. However, when the trawl was recovered – a type called a Blake Trawl – it was bursting with biology. Just what we wanted! Rhian Waller and Daniel Wagner went out to help the MT’s retrieve the trawl and empty the haul into buckets, which were then brought the sieving table at the back of the deck to clean. However, there was so much material, that we ran out of time and had to take the buckets inside to finish cleaning and sorting (into fossil corals, live hard corals, live soft corals and “others”). And that took until lunchtime (11.30-12.30)!
Lunch is not really lunch for me, because I have the midnight to midday shift – this means it’s more like dinner. But regardless of what you call it, it’s a chance to get a hot meal in the canteen and there’s always a good range of options, and salad too (for as long as the fresh food lasts anyway!).
After lunch I finished up cataloguing the specimens I want to take home for my analyses, and then enjoyed a couple of hours to myself. There’s plenty of things to do on board to chill out after a manic day of picking through beasties, or whatever, including a gym, a library and even a sauna (which, I hasten to add, I haven’t tried out yet). It was then time for me to try and get some sleep, although I’m still finding it hard to get to sleep in the afternoon!
I woke up at 11.45 pm to start my day. At 11.30-12.30 pm, the ship’s chefs produce what’s known as “Mid Rats”, or midnight rations, comprising cooked breakfasts, breads, muffins and bagels (and plenty of coffee for those of us starting late shifts). At the moment we are transiting between sites, which has given me a chance to catch up on some writing and help out clean up after the past few days of hectic sampling – including picking out the remaining fragments of corals from the trawl net – a very tricky task (although I do have a certain empathy for the beasties we trawl up, now I’ve actually been inside a trawl net myself! Fortunately there aren’t any photographs...).
And now I have another few hours to finish tidying the labs and to prepare for our next sampling event in the upcoming days.
The most important thing I did this morning was to speak to my sister on the phone and surprise her on her birthday!
Anyway, I hope you are all enjoying reading our blog and following our various exploits. I’d like to say a huge thanks to Rhian and Laura for all their help, and to Dann Blackwood for all his amazing photos (he can make even the most boring creature look beautiful!).
Kate Hendry
All photos by Dann Blackwood unless otherwise stated