The A-Team

Good Day for the A-Team (from R-L: Joey Kiker, Leis Van Kerckhoven, Emma Graham, Carolin Seeburger, Rip Hale, Kristin Lee, Sid Mitra, and yours truly in the back)...ok, I mean the night shift.  We had a productive night (I guess technically it is morning; midnight to noon) on our last shift.  The sunrise shed light on an incredible landscape (see the background to the A-team photo); we were within a mile or so of the NZ coast, pretty spectacular.  We didn't necessarily get through a lot of stations this past shift, but we did a good job on the ones we tackled and had a good time in the process.  We all work well together and everyone knows there job...there are many (A-frame operator, squirt boom op, tag liners, the deck captain (that's what I like to call myself), mud cutters, x-radiographer...the list goes on).  Unfortunately for Joey, he has been the teams "lab rat", running erosion experiments with our new Gust Erosion Microcosms.  We let him scurry out on deck this morning to help with the CTD and multi-corer at one of the sites.  Truth be told, he (and Julia on the "B-Team) has been working extremely hard and what can be a fairly frustrating job!  We have been working through a few problems with the Gust system (see the photo of me "fixing" the motor assembly...in my defense, this was after my 12 hour shift), but getting great data none the less.  Our spatial coverage of the shelf is pretty extensive, even this early into the cruise.  We hope increase our spatial resolution near the tripod sights in the next day or so...essentially tying the sites together from a benthic perspective.  OK, time to try and fix this motor, finish slicing a core and try to get some rest...