The Smoking Sea

When cold air blows across a warm sea surface, a fog forms; this is called sea smoke.  The storm system passing over us now is associated with cold front.  The cold wind moving over the warm Gulf Stream waters is producing a cool display of sea smoke.

 

Stormy Seas

A storm rolled into our study area a couple a days ago, and this has created more challenging conditions for work.  South of Cape Hatteras where we are working the sea state can become particularly bad because Northeast storm winds blow opposite the rapidly flowing Gulf Stream.  This can create steep and dangerous conditions.  Fortunately, we are working on a new and very seaworthy vessel, so risk of being at sea is reduced.  Having said this, we must always respect Neptune (God of the Sea), and we need to be extra careful when moving around the ship and working on deck during storm sea.

Getting Our Feet Wet (and Dirty)

After a couple days on the ship, it was nice to get a chance to put some sampling devices over the side to collect water and sediment.  The day watch literally learned the ropes on how to deploy and recover the multicore.   Once a core comes back on deck, it must be “extruded” and sliced up to produce subsamples which are bagged or bottled for later analysis.  The CTD is a device that measures the conductivity and temperature of water with depth.   The conductivity of the water is used to ascertain the salinity – the more dissolved ions, the more the water is able to conduct electricity.  The CTD (not shown) also has other sensors, such as oxygen, turbidity and fluorescence (which can be related to the amount of marine plants in the water).   Also, the CTD has a bunch of water bottles which can be “fired” at any depth, depending on the observed data profile.  The water samples can then be used to analyze water chemistry and/or biology.  Both are being done on this cruise.

The day watch gets to work (left).  Ryan Gibbons helps prep for the next core (right).

Sampling is a team effort. 

Dave Sybert and Reide Corbett "extrude" or cut up a core.

Ian Conery bottles some sediment.

Standing Watch – On the Dark Side

On most ships, the captain and crew use a watch system to make sure there are always people awake to safely operate the vessel and maintain productivity.   Scientific crew typically does the same thing.  Because this cruise is more exploratory with a wide variety of research operations, our watches are a little more free form than usual.  Nevertheless, we need to keep the science going 24-7, and to make this happen we have essentially split our operations into two periods and activities. The day shift, led by Reide, is focusing on water-column and seabed sampling.   At night we have a skeleton group for seafloor mapping and sub-bottom and current profiling.

The ship at night is quiet.  It’s peaceful, but it also can be downright painful.  After 8 hours, watching a computer screen at 5 AM can be grueling… and this will drive those on watch a little batty.  In an effort to keep alert we’ll analyze data, talk, eat, play music, write computer code, make jokes and, of course, drink coffee.  While oceanographic research is often very interesting, the ocean is big, and gathering data can be mind-numbing.  It’s helpful to have creative and fun folks around to make the long hours a little more entertaining.  

4:19 AM:  Trip takes a break from writing Matlab code to proces ADCP data.

4:22 AM: Keith keeps "cleaning" multibeam data.

4:21 AM: J.P. pretends to type on computer while watching multibeam data.

6:28 AM: The sun starts to rise.  Another ship is on the horizon.

6:42 AM: Day is breaking. Dinner (breakfast) is almost ready!

Goodbye to the Knorr

The science party was treated to a special moment yesterday.  As we steamed north towards Cape Hatteras, we rendez-voused with our ship's predecessor on its journey south to its new home. The R/V Knorr was the research vessel that found the Titantic, and it had a long and accomplished research career.  This was a sentimental moment for the crew as many had spent years working aboard her.  

The vessel was retired from the U.S. ocean research fleet in 2014 and was purchased by Mexico.  An article in Oceanus discusses the Knorr’s distinguished history, “Over the past 44 years, Knorr has conducted research from the Arctic Circle to the Southern Ocean and many places in between. Knorr has also taken part in some of the 20th century’s greatest ocean discoveries, from locating the wreck of R.M.S. Titanic to finding completely unknown and unexpected life forms on the seafloor…  When Knorr retires at the end of 2014, it will have traveled more than 1.35 million miles—a distance equivalent to more than two round trips to the moon.”

It was fitting that the Knorr steamed south under a picturesque sunset...