Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 20:21:49 +0000 From: "Coronesi, Stephanie" Subject: Message 16 Cc: "Iannuzzi, Richard" 17:10 (2002.01.23) 66 Degrees 34.091' South Latitude 72 Degrees 44.611' West Longitude (Bellingshausen Sea) Air Temp: 0.6 Degrees C SST (Sea Surface Temperature): 1.255 C Wind Speed: 16 knots 141 Degrees Air Pressure: 984.0 mBar Hey There! Well, it's come down to crunch time for the serious science goings-on. We only have a few more days to travel around taking samples from stations. We'll be at Palmer Station this weekend and after that we'll be travelling back to Punta Arenas, crossing the Drake and all that jazz. A bunch of the groups will still have work to do, but it won't be as intense as it's been the past couple of weeks. I'm attaching a picture of me filtering water samples. That's a porthole to the left, with the cover down to keep the light out. The room was fairly dark when the picture was taken, but the flash makes it look much brighter than it was. I take those brown bottles you see to the CTD after it comes back up from a drop and I fill each brown bottle with water from different depths. The bottles aren't see-through because chlorophyll is light-sensitive and every effort is made to keep the samples in the dark. Each bottle is poured into a glass tower for filtering, then the pumps are turned on to suck out the water which is collected in large glass flasks that we also empty between batches. The towers are cleaned between batches and new filters (super-thin white disks about the size of a quarter) are loaded up in all of the towers. Actually, the 22 big bottles that go deep down and collect the water are part of the "rosette," which stands about seven feet tall. The CTD is a much smaller machine that is attached to the underside of the rosette, but it is the brains of the operation. For convenience sake most people refer to the whole set-up as the CTD. I'll try to get you a picture of that soon as well. Rich told me that very rarely a jellyfish (or parts of a jellyfish) will actually get sucked a big bottle when it's down collecting, and when you go to rinse your little bottles and take samples, the water actually stings your hands! Fortunately that hasn't happened yet this trip, though we did have a very long stringy piece of tentacle wrapped over the top bar of the rosette, hanging precariously above bottle 8. In addition to our busy science schedules, the twelve of us who hadn't crossed the Antarctic Circle before have been running to brief meetings twice a day for the past couple of days to try to get this skit together. We haven't managed to get the whole group together even once yet, so tomorrow's ceremony should be interesting to say the least. My next message promises to be a doozy! Tracy, Our Second Officer, just came over and wanted to make sure that I send a big hello to you all from him. He's been reading these messages as I post them in our "Public" folder for those on board to read. Tracy's good-hearted boisterousness has definitely added to the experience here on the ship. You always know when he's in the room and he still manages to stand out in this crowd full of characters. That said, I'm a bit wary of how much he appears to be looking forward to running us through the wringer during tomorrow's ceremony. ;) So that's pretty much it from here. We have another cast coming up soon and a meeting after dinner to try to get a rough draft of the script together. So much of this skit is going to be improvisation. Keep your fingers crossed for us!!! Until tomorrow then! -Miss C Steph!