1 down, 34 to go

This morning we completed our first station (of 34). We’ve been “parked” on this spot on the ocean for the past 3 days (~68 hours) while sending down 15 different casts, several to the ocean floor at 5,500m deep! This station is one of the longest ones, because we collect a lot more water than normal for additional lab groups to participate and analyze more things than the average station.

Our next few stations will happen in quick succession (~9 hours each) because they are over the Peruvian shelf where waters are much shallower (120 – 400 m), and less people want to collect water samples. We have a bunch of other shallow casts throughout the cruise (~2 hours each), some “normal” stations where we will be parked for ~34 hours each, and 4 more of the “super” stations where we sit for 3 days.

Today is also Halloween! Here on the ship, a few of us planned ahead and brought our costumes and a few people decided to make costumes out of whatever they could find. Claire, Laura, and I dressed up as our water collectors, called GoFlo bottles. Unlike the bottles described previously, ours don’t have a pressure sensor to pop them open in the water; this is because those sensors are made of metal, which contaminates the seawater we’re collecting (these samples are EXTREMELY contamination-prone). Instead, we have to open them manually on the deck. Imagine if a bunch of dust, ship exhaust, or seabird excrement landed in our super clean GoFlo bottles right before deployment! To prevent this, we cover their tops and bottoms in shower caps when open on deck.

 

Me, Claire, and Laura in our costumes along with some GoFlo bottles inside our lab space.

Some other Halloween costumes included people in cat ears and bunny ears and a full-suited penguin. The galley got into the spirit by putting out better than usual candy selection, and some Halloween-y fake tattoos. A bunch of decorations popped up by mid-morning, and the whole ship felt pretty spirited.

Claire and I also planned ahead, stocking up on candy both in the USA and Ecuador before the trip, so we could reverse trick-or-treat (hand out candy to people on the ship). We were pleasantly surprised to find a bunch of other people did the same!

Happy Halloween, readers!