Ms T @ Sea

Thrills & Chills

2010-03-10T14:47:00.002-05:00

Last year, I learned about Thrills & Chills at DLMS. It's where you list things that you're happy about and things that you're sad about. Here are my lists for the cruise.

Thrills
Seeing penguins (and seals, and whales, but especially the penguins)
Riding in a helicopter
Seeing icebergs and glaciers
Making new friends on the ship
Visiting Rothera Station
Learning about Antarctica
Walking on sea ice

Chills
Feeling cold so much of the time
Working such long hours (12 hours a day, 7 days a week)
Being away from home for two months
Changing plans so much because of weather and ice conditions

Thanks to all of you for reading the blog. I'm home now - traveling through Chile after the earthquake wasn't as bad as I thought it would be! Special thanks to everyone on the NBP, everyone at DLMS, and the folks at LEEFS for making this happen.

So what happens now? I'm done posting until my next adventure, but you can still reach me at Ms.T.at.Sea@gmail.com.

We're all okay

2010-02-27T21:20:00.000-05:00

Just letting everyone know that the Palmer is still at sea. Being on a ship in deep water is actually one of the safest places you can be during a tsunami. I'll try to post one or two more times, but please be aware that our port, Punta Arenas, has no internet now, so you may not hear from me for a while. I am very lucky that I was here at sea and not in Santiago when this occurred. My thoughts are with those in Chile and the affected islands.

Suzee & Craig

2010-02-27T15:52:00.002-05:00

I think it's about time that I told you about the robot on board. We have a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) named Suzee. Suzee goes into the water, attached to the ship by a cable, and explores the sea floor.

Suzee has a camera and a movable arm for taking samples. She's operated by Dries Boone, Katrien Heirman, and Lieven Naudts from Ghent University in Belgium. Dries says that controlling the ROV is a lot like playing a video game!

Here's a photo from a recent dive. Did you know that so many different things lived deep in the ocean? I didn't know that corals could survive in such cold water.

The feathery things are called crinoids, commonly referred to as sea lilies. The curly ones are brittle stars, and the bulbous pink and blue creatures are tunicates. You can also see a few sponges and soft coral.

It turns out that at least half of the deep water species in the ocean have never been described. That means they don't have names, and nobody knows anything about them. I think that's a little scary. But the cool part is that if you're a biologist, you have an excellent chance of finding a new species here. My friend Craig Smith, from the University of Hawaii (who identified all of the species in the photo for me), has personally collected hundreds of species that were totally new to science. He even has
three species named after him!

Kind of a Big Deal

2010-02-21T11:36:00.003-05:00

I don't know if you're aware, but this cruise is kind of a big deal. It took years of planning, the cooperation of different universities all over the world, and a whole lot of work. The people at National Geographic thought it was cool enough to send three reporters - a photographer, a science writer, and a videographer.

So it shouldn't surprise you that I'm not the only one blogging. This blog is primarily meant to be educational and is part of the LEEFS program at Columbia University. But if you want to learn more about some of the projects going on here and get some different perspectives, here is the list of blogs being kept:

www.hamilton.edu/antarctica
This is kept by Kim Roe, a graduate student working on the cruise.

www.oceanswide.org
Buzz Campbell writes this one, and he's been working out here in Antarctica for a long time.

http://glacieradventures.blogspot.com
Martin Truffer - he's from Alaska and knows all about snow and ice.

http://iceshelf.wordpress.com/
This is kept by Terry Haran and Ted Scambos (the guy with the AMIGOS) at the National Snow and Ice Data Center

http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2010/01/what-happened-to-larsen-b.html
This is the National Geographic blog. I bet they'll have some great photos there!

www.poolwijs.ugent.be
This blog is kept by the team running the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV). They're from Gent University in Belgium. And you can follow the ROV on twitter @ROV_Suzee (yes, they named the ROV Suzee).

http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/expeditions/blog_antarctica/Larissa_cruise.html

This is kept by Craig Smith and Laura Grange, who work on marine ecosystems at the University of Hawaii.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/Ice
More marine ecosystems, this time by Maria Vernet and Mattias Cape of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

And don't forget, I'm also on twitter @Ms_T_at_Sea. I meant to post this list a while ago, but I forgot to. Sorry about that! But please check out these blogs and let me know what you think. FYI, the photo is one of the NBP that I took from the zodiac a few days ago.

Here Comes Zodiac

2010-02-19T18:42:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was one of those days when the Antarctic is just perfect. We had blue skies for our helo ops and calm water for some work by zodiac. Zodiacs are small boats with a flat bottom, air-filled sides, and a small motor.

We have two zodiacs, and each went out for three trips. There was a trip to retrieve a time-lapse camera for the National Geographic team, there were trips to gather kelp for the biologists, there were trips to gather water for chemical analysis, and there was my trip to listen to some glaciers. We used the hydrophones again, this time to listen to glaciers instead of sea ice.

The moment we put the hydrophones in the water, Ross, our marine technician and zodiac pilot saw that the iceberg that we were listening to was going to flip over. It did, and I have a great video that I'll post once I'm back on shore. I listened to that iceberg and one other before it was time to return to the ship.

On the way back to the ship, we saw a leopard seal on some ice. Leopard seals are known to eat people, but they generally don't bother you if you're in a zodiac. So we approached, carefully and quietly, and got to circle around him before we went back to the ship. You can identify a leopard seal by it's silhouette: there's a medium head, a skinny neck, and a big body. They're the only seals with necks, and they also have leopard-like spots on their undersides - but you usually don't want to get close enough to see those!

CTD #3

2010-02-17T17:31:00.003-05:00

Now that you know how to run a CTD and how it works, what about the data it collects? This figure is more or less what I see on my screen while the CTD is in the water.

There's a lot going on. The y-axis shows pressure (in a unit called the decibar), which is almost the same as depth in meters. So you can think of the vertical scale as depth.

There are four x-axes: fluorometer (remember, that records the microscopic plants), salinity, temperature, and oxygen. Having all four on one graph means that I can keep track of lots of different variables at once.

What do you notice about this graph? I notice that below 40m, temperature and oxygen vary inversely - when one gets bigger, the other gets smaller. I also notice that at around 140m, it gets warmer very suddenly. I can also see that the maximum fluorescence is at 15m, so I bet the biologists will want a sample of the water there.

This graph only shows the top 200m, but the CTD actually went down to 600 m at this location. It's in a place called Hughes Bay on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula. And there's something special about this cast, something that makes it different from all the other casts. Can you guess what it is?

Preparation

2010-02-16T09:19:00.002-05:00

Out here, we spend a lot of time preparing for emergencies. Many of you know that I took a helicopter underwater escape training class, and we have safety meetings before we work with any equipment on the deck. We spend a lot of time getting ready for things that will probably never happen.

Last week, three people left the ship by helicopter for nearby James Ross Island. On the flight home, the weather worsened and they had to land on the island. Greg Balco, the geologist I've told you about before, Doug Fox, our science writer, and Barry James, the helicopter pilot, had to spend the night on the ice. It took a few days for the weather to improve, so they ended up staying on the ice for four days and three nights.

They're all back on the ship now and they're fine. Every time one of us takes a flight by helicopter, we have a survival bag. Those bags add a lot of weight, which means we can't take as much equipment as we would sometimes like. But those bags are the reason that everyone made it through. They had tents, stoves, food, and sleeping bags, as well as a survival manual. All three of the people on the ice have a lot of camping experience and their personal bags contained spare clothing and flashlights, even though they completely expected to be back on the ship the same night.

Greg, Doug, and Barry each ate one freeze-dried meal per day. They had fuel and a stove for melting water. In the Antarctic, water can be a big problem. You can't melt snow in your mouth for water because it takes too much energy, and your body needs that energy to keep itself warm. They all stayed calm and kept in contact with the ship via a satellite phone, and they cut blocks of ice to build a shelter to keep some of the wind and snow off the tents.

Ocean Circulation, Part II

2010-02-11T19:26:00.008-05:00

Now that you understand where deep and bottom water form "ocean circulation, part I", lets look at one ocean basin in particular: the Atlantic. Right now, I'm in a part of the Southern Ocean that could also be considered the tip of the South Atlantic. Those of you at DLMS are very near the North Atlantic. So if we took a north-south line from you to to me, what would the ocean look like in between us?

Here's a map showing salinity from -60° (that's me!) to 70° (further north than New York, which is at 40°) in the western Atlantic Ocean. The average salinity in the ocean is 35. The units of salinity are a little complicated - some people use what's called the practical salinity unit, or psu, and some people use per mil (0/00‰), which is like percent except that it's a fraction out of one thousand instead of one hundred.

For now, just concentrate on the colors in the map. Red and yellow represent the high salinities and blue and purple represent low salinities. The big mass of green is NADW. The blue is AABW, and the purple is AAIW. The red area near 30° of latitude is water that flows out from the Mediterranean Sea.

Saltier water is denser, but temperature has a bigger effect on density than salinity does. AABW isn't the saltiest, but it's the coldest and the densest. NADW comes next: it's not as cold, but it's very salty. AAIW is near the same temperature as NADW, but it isn't as salty so it's less dense. The water from the Mediterranean Sea is very salty but also very warm, so it's the least dense of all.

Question: Besides temperature and salinity, what else do you think might make water masses different?

Hydrophones.

2010-02-07T17:35:00.005-05:00

Remember Dr. Erin Pettit from Girls on Ice ? She's working on Flask Glacier to the southwest of us right now, but before she left, she asked me and Yuribia Muñoz to help her out with a really cool project.

One of our goals down here is to understand how glaciers work. We're studying them lots of different ways. We put AMIGOS on them, we put GPS stations on them, we take ice cores, we take sediment cores, we look at satellite pictures - you get the idea. But Erin wants to try something else: listening to them.

Some of you may remember that I use sound to measure ocean currents. That's called active acoustics because I send out a sound and listen for the return. This is passive acoustics, where I put a special kind of microphone, called a hydrophone, into the water and listen.

What am I listening for? When ice melts, it makes sounds. It can sound like crackling or popping. When big chunks of ice fall off glaciers (called calving) it can sound like fireworks, at least in the air. Erin and other scientists think that they could use passive acoustic systems to monitor glacial melt rates in areas that are too hard to reach with other instruments.

To test that idea, we are making measurements of sound near any ice we can reach. Our goal right now is to gather preliminary data and also to test the instruments.

Yesterday, we got to go out on the ice again. The biologists took an ice core to look for algae and we used the hole that remained to put the hydrophones in to the water. Clockwise from the left, you can see Yuribia Muñoz, Kim Roe, me, and Laura Grange. We got some good data and identified some problems with one of the hydrophones. It isn't heavy enough, so it's hard to get it through the hole in the ice. Once it's in the water it doesn't fully straighten the wire it's attached to, so we can't be sure exactly how deep it is. We also had some interference on both hydrophones from noises that the ship makes.

It's really important to work out those kinds of problems, even if they sound small and unimportant compared to the complicated equations we use to turn sound from the water into usable data. Scientists need to be able to solve practical problems as well as intellectual ones. Did any of you at DLMS have similar problems with your science fair projects?

Ocean Circulation, Part I

2010-02-06T19:51:00.003-05:00

Whenever I do a CTD cast, I get a very precise snapshot of the ocean. I know the temperature and salinity of the water underneath me and exactly how they vary with depth. But it's only one moment, in one place. For the data to make sense, I need to understand how the ocean works.

The ocean is mostly stable. The ocean is heated by the sun, so the water on top is warmer than the water in the bottom. If you remember what you learned about convection in sixth grade, you know that you only get all of that motion when heat is added to the bottom of a fluid. When it's added at the top, you get layers of lighter (less dense) water over layers of heavier (more dense) water.

Still, the oceans circulate. One reason is that the tropics get more heat than the poles do. Since it's warm near the equator and colder everywhere else, heat has to circulate. Some of that circulation is done by the atmosphere, but some is done by the ocean.

Water sinks in the ocean in two areas: the North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. The water that sinks in the North Atlantic is called North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) and is very salty. Some of the water that sinks in the Southern Ocean goes down to around 1000m and is called Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW). The really cold water from the Southern Ocean sinks all the way down to the sea floor and is called Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW).

NADW is around 2° to 4° C (35.6° to 39.2° F). That sounds pretty cold to me! But AABW is colder: -2° to 0° C (28.4° to 32° F). Based on these different temperatures, we can see how far they travel.

Everywhere the map shows red is NADW, and the blue is AABW. Now you can see why processes in Antarctica are so important: water that forms here spreads all over the world.

Science Fair, Antarctica style

2010-02-03T00:11:00.002-05:00

It's science fair season at Dual Language Middle School, and I'm sorry I can't be there for it. But I've been working on my own science fair project out here and I'd like to report some results.

Topic: The speed of ocean currents in Antarctica

Question: How does the depth of the water affect its speed?

Hypothesis: Shallow water moves faster than deep water.

Background Information: Lowered acoustic Doppler current profilers (LADCPs) use sound energy to measure the speed and direction of ocean currents. Water in the ocean can be moved by wind, tides, and differences in pressure due to temperature or salt content.

Procedure: Use LADCP data to compare the depth of water (the independent variable) with the speed of the water (the dependent variable).

Results: I was able to collect data from 38 stations all around the Antarctica Peninsula. On average, the fastest water was at the surface as predicted (figure 1).

Discussion: Average speed does not tell the whole story. The maximum speed that was found in any location occurred at 60 m (figure 2), and the minimum was found at 175 m (figure 3). There is a lot of variability in water speeds, especially at depths above 100m. Below that, the speed changes very little but does not stay exactly steady.

These figures show average, maximum, and minimum water speeds. Please note the different scales.

Conclusions: On average, the fastest water is at the surface. However, there is variability between stations and there can be high speeds below the surface. Speed generally decreases with depth, but there are exceptions. Differences in tides, wind, and ice conditions might also effect water speed.

CTD, Part #1 "the basics of running the CTD"

2010-01-30T11:49:00.003-05:00

Some of you might remember the CTD from my last trip to the Philippines. CTD stands for conductivity, temperature, and depth. There's a big frame, lots of bottles for holding water, and sensors for measuring a whole bunch of different things. It goes into the water on a thick cable attached to a winch. Here are Kim Roe and Yuribia Munoz opening the bottles so that the
CTD can go in the water:

While the CTD is in the water, a scientist sits at the computer and watches all the sensors. It's an important job, because that person is responsible for telling the winch operator how fast to go and when to stop, and for making sure that everything is working correctly, and for stopping the CTD to close the bottles at right the depths. While the CTD is in the water, everyone else is crowding around the CTD computer, asking to see this graph or that graph and arguing about where to sample water.

And do you know who is responsible for running the CTD? Me.

Well, it's me if it goes into the water between 8am and 8pm, otherwise it's done by Bruce Huber (my boss) or one of the electrical technicians on board. It's important enough that I'm going to do a few posts about the CTD. Next time I'll talk about the data that I get from the CTD, but for now we'll start with the basics. Here is my list of the top ten things you should remember if you ever find yourself running the CTD:

10. Ask questions! If you don't understand what to do, or how to do it, just ask someone who knows. Don't agree to do something if you don't understand why.

9. Remember to have fun. The job you're doing is pretty cool! Look at data from other CTD stations, make a hypothesis to explain what you're seeing, and try to understand what you're looking at.

8. Pay attention. It's not that your job is hard, it's that it requires a lot of concentration. No daydreaming! Conversations are okay, but you need to keep your eyes on the screen.

7. Go to the bathroom before you start. Once the CTD begins, you can't leave for even a minute.

6. Stay calm. Other people will get stressed as they try to figure out what they want you to do. That's okay. You can't control how other people react, but you can control yourself.

5. Take it slow. There is no prize for getting the job done a few minutes faster, and you're more likely to make a mistake if you hurry.

4. Be nice to your winch operator! He's the one who is really driving. If he does his job well, it makes you look good, so make it easy for him to do his job well.

3. Take very good notes. You think you'll remember little questions or comments that you had, but you won't.

2. Make sure you have good friends around. Sometimes Kim will bring me M&Ms, or Kathleen (my roomie and photographer extraordinaire) will go and find my mug of tea for me.

1. DON'T HIT THE BOTTOM. If you hit the seafloor, everyone will be really, really mad at you. You might break or lose the equipment, and it will take lots of time to fix. This is the worst thing that can happen to the CTD. So DON'T HIT THE BOTTOM.

Rothera Station

2010-01-28T13:59:00.001-05:00

I boarded this ship in Chile, went to Antarctica, and stepped off in
England.

Well, not quite. But it sure seemed that way as our tour guide spoke with a British accent and then invited us all for tea and biscuits. We were at Rothera Research Station, a part of the British Antarctic Survey and now a part of LARISSA.

Four out of our five glaciologists were out in the field when the weather got bad, so our helicopter couldn't pick them up. Instead, the plane from Rothera was able to get them, and they'll be working out of Rothera for the next two weeks. But they needed all of their supplies (including the AMIGOS!), so the ship went to meet them.

I was so excited to get off the ship at Rothera! Working at sea is fun, but it's great to stretch your legs on dry land. We got a tour of the area and saw penguins and seals. In addition to the tea and biscuits (cookies) and a game of football (soccer), we had a big party and all got to relax a bit.

Now we're heading back to the eastern side of the peninsula. We'll have a lot of work to do, but we're all hopeful that the ice will be better and we'll be able to get all the way south.

A History Lesson

2010-01-22T13:36:00.007-05:00

I was really lucky yesterday. I was lucky because my very kind boss, Bruce Huber, volunteered me as an assistant to Greg Balco. Greg is a geologist from Berkeley, and he's here studying the glacial history of this region.

Geology is like a big puzzle. The area where we worked, Duthier's Point, was once covered by a glacier. Now it isn't. But when did that happen? How can we find out?

Greg was looking for rocks that would give us clues. Since I was his assistant, I was there to help him look for rocks but mainly for safety. Greg's work involves a lot of climbing up and down rocks, and it would be too risky to send one person off alone, especially in Antarctica.

In search of clues, we took a helicopter to Duthiers Point. I loved riding in the helicopter and seeing the glaciers and icebergs from above. The ship looked so small! Once we were on land, we started looking.

We were looking for rocks that didn't belong, called glacial erratics. When glaciers expand, they pick up rocks along the way and drop them in new places. It's pretty easy to spot them. In this case, they were quartz, which is much shinier and lighter than the rocks that we were standing on. The problem is that Greg needs glacial erratics that haven't been covered by snow. If the glacier retreated but then snow covered the rock, Greg's techniques for determining how long the rock had been exposed wouldn't help. The rock can't tell the difference between being covered by a glacier and covered by snow! So we needed to find a glacial erratic that was perched high up, not in a hole or or protected by other rocks.

We didn't find any good rocks at our first site, so we started climbing. We climbed. And climbed. We made it down 300 feet of rock until we were almost at the sea. As we climbed, I though about two things.

The first was the penguins. They were everywhere, perched only a few feet away from me. They had their babies on their feet and they were ridiculously cute. We're not supposed to approach them, but they didn't seem to care about us at all.

The second was memories of the last time I had done any climbing at all, which was about 8 years ago and was not nearly as challenging. Greg is an experienced climber; I am not. I was terrified, hanging on to the edges of slippery, crumbling rocks for dear life. But I kept going, because I hate to admit that I can't do things and because every time I turned around, I saw views that were more beautiful than ever.

When we made it to the bottom, we were in the middle of a penguin colony that now surrounds a GPS station. Greg had to check on the station, which transmits data to scientists back home. The penguins have now moved in all around it and continued to ignore us.

After spending some time with the penguins, we headed back up the cliff. The plan was to pick up any good rocks that we had spotted on the way down - but we hadn't found any! Climbing up is always much easier than climbing down. I think that's because you're not looking in the direction that you might soon be falling.

At the top of the cliff, I rested for a bit while Greg called the ship and asked them to send the helicopter to pick us up. While we were waiting, we wandered around a little more and there it was: the perfect glacial erratic, perched in an unprotected location. Greg tried to break it so that we could bring home a smaller, lighter piece, but it was too hard and he decided to keep the whole thing.

The helicopter came and took us back to the ship. I had another ride with a great view. When I got back, I quickly showered, ate dinner, and collapsed into my bunk.

Helo Ops

2010-01-20T17:41:00.000-05:00

Today was one of those days you don't ever forget. I rode in helicopter! I
saw penguins up close! I had so much fun and learned so much that now all I
want to do is go to sleep.

I'm going to post all about the experience tomorrow when I'm well rested
and the feeling has returned to my toes. Until then, check out this
chinstrap penguin who posed for me!

Q & A with class 8A (and special guest)

2010-01-18T23:24:00.007-05:00

How old do you need to be to apply to the Girls on Ice Program? Luis Jimenez wonders if there is a similar program for young men. You need to be 15 to 18. Full details are at http://girlsonice.org/apply. I'm sorry to say that there isn't a similar program for boys. Luis, I wish there was something better that I could tell you! But don't give up, because I'm sure that there are a lot of other field programs out there for high school students, even if they're not about glaciers.

We'd like to hear more about how you are spending your days and what kind of fun you are having! (Julio B really wants to know about the fun part). Oh, the fun we have! Here are some highlights:

- The lounge on this ship is awesome. There's a big screen TV, lots of movies (remember, we don't get TV channels), and really comfy chairs.

- I'm reading a book by my favorite author, Graham Greene. Every time I take a big trip, I buy myself one of his books. This way, I always have something to read to when I'm away from home that's new but that I'm sure I'll enjoy. This one is called The Human Factor and it's about a spy.

- It's been really fun getting to know so many people from different places. I especially like hearing stories from the sailors who've spent a long time in Antarctica.

- The cycling contest. There is a friendly competition going on to see who can bike the farthest (on a stationary bike, of course) in 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and an hour. I did my first 15 minutes yesterday! I made is 3.4 kilometers (2.1 miles).

- We make everything in to a party! Ted Scambos needed some help with his AMIGOS. He needed to assemble a 120 m (that's almost 400 feet!) of wire with thermometers on it. So he invited everyone, made popcorn, put out bowls of M&Ms and almonds, and Terry Haran (another AMIGOS team member) played guitar! We had a singalong and got the work done.

- The crossword puzzle is a big deal out here. We get one from the New York Times every Sunday and print it out really big to hang in the hallway. I tried to do some, but the glaciologists are way out of my league! They finish it really fast.

- The ship is from New Orleans, so we're all about football. The captain sends out emails with score updates during the games, and will even call down from the bridge when it gets exciting!

- We watch for penguins, whales, and seals! It's great to see them up close. Watching the icebergs is also fascinating for me because they're so different from anything else I've ever seen.

- While we were working on the ice, we might have taken a few extra moments to build a snowman. And make snow angels. And have a snowball fight.

I wanted to tell you about a typical day at sea, but I don't think I've had one yet. Give me another week or two to settle into a routine. And now for the special guest! I have some questions from my three year old nephew, Noam (posted for him by my sister).

Who drives the boat? How? Can you post a picture of the driver? The boat is driven by Captain Joe, or by the mates on watch. They drive the boat by using controls on the bridge, which is the highest part of the boat.

I know you study the ocean, but how do you get to study the water if you're on a big boat and the water is down below? We have so many different ways! I put machines over the side of the ship into the water to collect data and samples of water that can be analyzed on board. We also use sonar to collect data about the seafloor. Sometimes we even collect mud from the seafloor and bring it on the ship.

Where do you sleep?
In a bunk bed. I have a very small room, which is okay with me because I'm used to living in a very small apartment. And my roommate, Kathleen, is great. She knows all about this ship and about Antarctica because she's been working here for 14 years.

Adelie Penguins

2010-01-17T20:01:00.002-05:00

The nice folks up on the bridge always give us a call when they see wildlife. Then we all grab our cameras and rush out to our favorite spots to try and photograph whatever creatures have come to visit.

I'm no biologist, but seeing so many beautiful animals has made me curious. So I've been doing a little reading and I'd like to share with you what I've learned about some of our favorite visitors, the Adelie penguins.This photo of the Adelies was taken a few days ago by Caroline Lavoie.

Adelies are only 30 inches tall and weigh about 11 pounds. But millions of years ago, there were penguins that stood 5 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds! They're not alive today, and I'm having trouble imagining them.

While many of us associate penguins with Antarctica, they're actually spread all over the Southern Hemisphere, with a few living right on the equator. There are seventeen species of penguins, but only Adelies and emperor penguins live exclusively in Antarctica.

Playing in the Mud

2010-01-16T20:12:00.002-05:00

Science books can tell you a lot about the history of the world: when the plates moved, where the glaciers were, and what kind of plants and animals lived in different environments. But do you ever wonder how we get that kind of information?

One source is sediment cores. "Sediment," in this case, means mud. A greenish-brownish oozy sort of mud that is currently stuck under my fingernails and in my hair. Some of that mud is 11,000 years old!

We spent most of the day getting a 4-meter long segment of mud from the seafloor and analyzing it. First, the core has to be described and photographed. Then we put some of the mud away so that we will have a record of the core. Remember those PVC pipes that I was slicing up with the bandsaw? Now we're using them!

We also took samples of the mud every 5 cm at put it into vials. The photo shows the places where we took the mud. After that, we put big syringes into the remaining mud so it could be studied too.

Everything is labeled very carefully so that when the samples are analyzed, we'll know exactly where they came from. Within a few days, we'll have a whole story of how the landscape in this part of Antarctica has changed over time. This core is deeper than any other in the area, so we'll be able to add to the story told by other cores and extend it back an additional
1000-2000 years.

Q & A with DLMS 6th grade science club

2010-01-15T20:34:00.004-05:00

Hi science club! It feels like a long time since I was at school with you. You ask some good questions and I'm going to try and answer them all.

Diana asks: When you were walking on the ice was their any way it could have broken? What would you have done?
It's really unlikely. Sea ice is thick and stable, and there wasn't any wind blowing it around or strong current moving it. Also, we follow a lot of safety rules. I was on the ice with other people, I didn't go near the side of the ship where the ice had broken, and I wore a "float coat" the whole time. If I had fallen in, the float coat would have kept me on the surface until someone pulled me out.

Melissa asks: What animals have you seen so far? What do you eat at sea?
I have seen penguins, seals, whales, and birds. All of our food was loaded on the ship in Punta Arenas and we have good cooks on board. I just had oatmeal and fruit for breakfast. The cooks make these really enormous ice cream cakes for birthdays! I'm eating a lot of fruit because by our second month out here, it will all be gone. I've also eaten a rather large number of dark chocolate M&Ms.

Kiara asks: Have you started your research yet? If not, have you gotten bored?
There was a day or two where I was a little bored, but now I'm busy! I have started doing my research - both my science fair project and other work. I'll post some of my data soon. Today was kind of slow because we have bad weather, but it's nice to have a little break once in a while.

Isabella asks: Do you get along with everyone on board?
I do. You meet really interesting people at sea. I especially like going up on the bridge and talking to the captain.

Lewis asks: What are other scientists working on? That's a really big question! There are three main groups on board: geoscience, ecosystems, and ice/oceans (I'm in that last group). I'll try to explain what each group does in general and then give some specific examples.

Most of the geoscience people look at mud from the sea floor for clues about the history of Antarctica. Amy Leventer looks at ice cores to find out more about the history of the ice. Greg Balco looks at rocks to understand the history of glaciers. Ku Chul Yu looks at mud samples to understand the effects of tides and storms on ice shelves. Caroline Lavoie has a different type of job - she makes very detailed, accurate maps of the sea floor. Kim Roe filters seawater to collect the mud that is suspended in it, kind of like collecting the pulp from your orange juice, in order to determine the age and composition of the mud.

The ecosystems scientists study biology and the way that living things change. Maria Vernet studies microscopic plants in the water. David Honig looks at places where whales have died and fallen to the sea floor. It turns out that there are living things that can only survive on the bones of whales! Katrien Heirman, Dries Boone, and Lieven Naudts use an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) to study all sorts of things on the sea floor. The ROV has a camera and lots of other equipment and is named Suzy.

The ice and ocean people are studying the physics of the area. Erin Pettit (the one who runs Girls on Ice) looks at how glaciers change over time. She keeps track of when they get bigger from snow falling on them or smaller from melting or having pieces break off. And of course you know that Ted Scambos and his team study icebergs and ice shelves with AMIGOS. Bruce Huber and I study the ocean currents and properties of the water like temperature and salinity.

Whew! That's a long list and its not even everyone!

Korayma asks: Have you seen penguins yet? What kinds?
Yes, and they really are that cute! I've seen adelie penguins (they're the ones in the photo) and possibly one emperor penguin.

Girls on Ice

2010-01-14T06:34:00.002-05:00

While I've been staying on the ship, Erin Pettit has been flying off by helicopter to study glaciers. She has a really cool job, and I wish she would take me with her on some of her adventures. But it turns out that she wants to take you!

Erin runs a program called Girls on Ice (http://girlsonice.org). Every year since 1999, she takes 9 teenage girls to Mt. Baker in Washington State for 11 days. The program is FREE and applications are available now at
http://girlsonice.org/apply. Those of you at DLMS are a little too young for the program, but I want you to start thinking about it now so that you'll be all set to apply in a few years. And tell your friends!

This isn't just about getting to visit somewhere new and beautiful with an awesome scientist. You'll learn how to study glaciers, how to climb glaciers, how to stay safe on glaciers, and you'll even work with an artist to learn how to draw glaciers. And don't worry: you don't need any experience, you don't need perfect grades, and you don't even need to be sure that you want to be a scientist. You just need to be interested in learning more about the earth and in challenging yourself.

A Change In Plans

2010-01-13T10:48:00.001-05:00

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton wrote "Pack-ice might be described as a gigantic and interminable jigsaw-puzzle devised by nature. " Shackleton was a great Antarctic explorer. He wanted to be the first to cross the continent of Antarctica, but his expedition ran into unexpectedly icy conditions. He is famous now, not for achieving his goal, but for surviving the loss of his ship and keeping all of his men alive through terrible conditions.

I've been thinking about his story because we're working in the same area that he sailed, and we also have an unusually icy year. But unlike Shackleton, we have helicopters, satellite pictures of the ice, and reliable communication with land. We're also in a much bigger and safer ship!

I took that photo from the bridge of the ship (the bridge is like the cockpit of an airplane). You can see that the ship is entering the ice. We can break through the ice, but we can't go all that quickly. We sent a helicopter to check on the ice ahead of us and determined that it gets thicker further south and we can't get through. So we've done what Shackleton couldn't: we turned around and we'll be exploring the western side of the Antarctic peninsula instead of the eastern side.

In a few weeks, we'll try again to reach our original goal on the eastern side of the peninsula. Until then, we're going to do the best research that we can on the western side. We have a ship full of great scientists and equipment, so you can bet that we're not going to waste our time complaining about what we can't change. We've been working together to plan some cool projects on the ice-free western side. I'll start gathering data tonight and should be able to post some of my results soon.

Scientists on Ice

2010-01-11T16:32:00.002-05:00

I don't want to give you the idea that science is all fun and games. We work hard! But I have to admit that today has been pretty spectacular. The morning was spent watching the helicopters take off and land for an ice reconnaissance mission. Since the ship is fully iced in, we got to go off ship and play in the snow!

When I took that photo, I was standing on 3 inches of snow over about 3 feet of ice over some 2000 feet of water. You can see the ship and the returning helicopter!

In the Q & A post, I showed a photo of an iceberg. That ice came from water vapor in the atmosphere which formed snow or rain and landed on an ice shelf or glacier. The ice then broke off into the ocean.

The ice under the snow in this picture is completely different. It came from the ocean! When seawater freezes, it forms sea ice that floats on the surface of the water. The ice crystals push the salt out in to little pockets between the crystals. Over time, the salt drains out leaving fresh ice behind. The ice we were on is called fast ice, because it is attached ("made fast" in sailing terms) to the ice shelf.

Hola, Amigos!

2010-01-10T18:49:00.005-05:00

People are very friendly at sea. Still, Ted Scambos spends an awful lot of time talking about his amigos. But it turns out that these are no ordinary friends - they're Automated Meteorology-Ice-Geophysics Observing Stations.

The area that we'll be visiting used to be a huge ice shelf, called Larsen B. It collapsed 2002, losing 3320 square kilometers (1,282 square miles) of ice. One of the goals of this research cruise is to figure out how that happened and what it means for the rest of the area. Only a small piece of Larsen B, the Scar Inlet Shelf, remains.

Before this cruise, Ted and his team tested the hypothesis that when there is a lot of water sitting on an ice shelf, it works its way down into cracks in the ice and causes the ice shelf to break apart. Normally, the pressure of the ice is enough to keep small cracks from growing. But this time, there was so much water that the cracks were pushed all the way open and the ice sheet broke apart.

How did he test this hypothesis? With AMIGOS! AMIGOS are machines that keep track of their location, the temperature of the air around them, and the thickness of the ice underneath them. They even take photos and send all of this information back to Ted. Ted put AMIGOS out on icebergs and saw that there was a lot of melted water on the icebergs right before they came apart. Their temperature was near the freezing point of water, which is very warm for an iceberg. These results were consistent with the hypothesis that water on the ice causes them to break apart.

But to get stronger proof, Ted is putting newer, better AMIGOS on the Scar Inlet shelf to see exactly what happens. If the hypothesis is correct, they should see more and more melted water on the surface of the ice before it breaks apart. Here is a picture of an AMIGOS on an iceberg, and one of Ted working on a thermometer for one of the new AMIGOS. Just so you know, he isn't only interested in how icebergs and ice shelves break apart. He's also monitoring what happens to glaciers after the ice shelves around them are gone, but we'll cover that in another post.

(Photo originally published in Journal of Glaciology, reproduced with
permission of the author)

Commenter Q & A

2010-01-09T14:08:00.003-05:00

Science is just starting to get underway, so I thought this would be a good time to respond to some commenter questions. Just so you know, I'm doing this all by email, not internet, so I can't reply in-line to your comments.

Richard: What is the break down on crew versus scientists on board?

The breakdown is actually between science, Raytheon, and Edison Chouest Offshore (ECO). ECO is responsible for running the ship and Raytheon is responsible for assisting science in labs and on the deck. We have 29 science, 14 Raytheon, and 23 ECO.

Nancy: What a wonderful, interesting set of pictures. They make me feel as if I am there with you on your ship. Did you have to do anything special to clean off the PVC pieces? Was it the first time you took samples of mud from the seafloor?

Thanks. We actually tried vacuuming each other to get the PVC off, but it didn't work. The stuff finally came off when we walked down the very windy dock to the ship. And yes, this will be the first time that I help sample mud from the seafloor.

Erik: Good Day Mrs. T, I envy you, your cruise to Antarctica. I am a semi-retired yacht captain working ashore, so would love to follow your research. You said you are studying ocean currents. What is your background?

Your job sounds pretty cool too! I'm a doctoral candidate in ocean and climate physics. Most of my background is in the tropics, so this cold weather stuff is all new to me. I use equipment called Lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (LADCPs) to measure ocean velocity using sound. I'll post more about the mechanics of that later on. Where did you sail as a yacht captain?

RW: Found you through the Happiness Project. I cannot believe you are going to Antarctica. When my children were just little we watched a documentary about such a vessel. And we have read a Madeleine L'Engle book about such a trip. I am super excited to have discovered your blog.

First, major thanks to the happiness project and Gretchen Rubin for promoting my blog. And thank you for reminding me about the Madeleine L'Engle book! I have a signed, hard cover copy of that book somewhere in my mother's house and I highly recommend it.

RW: Hope the waters have settled for you. How long before you reach your destination?

Funny you should mention it. The waters have settled, but the pack ice is too thick to move through. We're turning around and trying a different route to the Larsen B ice shelf. Our best guess is a few days, but we just don't know.

In case you're wondering, I took that photo yesterday from the bridge. A post all about icebergs will be coming soon!

I love rock and roll

2010-01-07T20:24:00.008-05:00

Which is good, because we've been doing plenty of rocking and rolling! Things have calmed down a bit, but we were getting 40-foot waves. I wasn't actually seasick, but I couldn't do much besides lay down in my bunk and wait for calmer waters. I kept waking up because I was sliding around in my bunk!

Boats, like airplanes, can move in three ways: roll, pitch, and yaw. Roll is when the while ship moves port and starboard (left
and right). Pitch is when the ship moves forward and aft (front and back), which I think feels much worse. Yaw is when the boat points in different directions. That one isn't usually a big deal, because the captain keeps the boat going straight. But if the boat were spinning in circles, that would probably be enough to make everyone dizzy.

This is what it looked like when we left port:

I'm sorry I couldn't get any pictures of the rough seas for you - it looked awesome from the windows - but I wasn't feeling well enough to go outside with my camera. Here is a map of our current position:

Once we passed the tip of South America, we were no longer sheltered by land. That meant we got the full force of the Drake Passage, which is the roughest water in the world!

I have the best job ever

2010-01-04T07:26:00.003-05:00

(Photo copyright Kathleen Gavahan)

Yes, those are helicopters. We'll be doing helicopter operations over the ice and over the water once we're further south. You can see how well they're secured to the hangar! There are only a few inches between the blades and the walls.

The helicopter pilots let me wear a flight helmet and sit inside! I loved it, and I can't wait to fly in one. The flight helmet that I'm wearing will let me communicate with the pilot and other passengers by radio, since it will be too loud for conversation. And just so you know, those highly fashionable overalls I'm wearing are part of my clothing issue while I'm in Antarctica.

Complicated Science, Simple Machines

2010-01-04T07:18:00.005-05:00

Okay, we're still stuck in port. But a ship is a pretty interesting place even when it isn't going anywhere. This is where we will be going:

That's the Antarctic peninsula, just south of the tip of South America. The rainbow colors indicate the depth of the water in places that the ship has been. The pictures taped to the big map are recent images of the ice in that area. I don't know very much about ice (yet!), but I can tell you that it's very icy out there.

Once we leave port, we'll be doing a lot of complicated science. But we have to think about safety on the ship, and we'll be crossing some rough water. Here is a piece of equipment that I will need once we're working:

It's a battery charger and it's very heavy. When the ship moves, it could fall off the table and break or hit something. So before we leave port, everything gets tied down. That's where the simple machines come in! See the metal circle to the right of the charger? That's an eye hook. To get it into the table, I drilled a hole and screwed it in. But it was too hard to tighten with just my hands, so I used a lever.

I know that it's just a screwdriver, and I'm not even using it right! I apply effort to the handle, the part of the eye hook closest to the effort acts as the fulcrum, and the other side of the eye hook is the load.

Once I have an eye hook on either side of charger, I still need to use rope to tie it down. But I can't get the rope tight enough! Luckily, I can use a pulley to gain a mechanical advantage:

How is this a pulley system? I'm going to use the eye hook as my fixed pulley and that loop in the rope as my moveable pulley. And there is is, all tied down and safe:

And here you can see the pulley loop (formed by a knot called a trucker's hitch) and how the remaining rope is attached to the eye hook (using two half-hitches).

We sail at 1500 today! That's 3pm for you land-based types.

Cargo in the Hold

2010-01-01T11:57:00.003-05:00

This will be my last post from land. We're still setting up to do science, but this is so cool I just had to show it to you. We store entire containers on ships. Containers (like the one you saw in the last post) are the big metal things on the back of trucks, and they are heavy! But how do you get an entire container inside a ship?

See the floor where people are standing?

They attach the crane to floor...

And lift it right up! The space you see underneath is called the hold:

Then the container is attached the crane and guided in:

Here it is sitting in the hold:

And here it is in place so that there's room for another container next to it!

That's all for now. We plan to set sail tomorrow, January 2nd, at 1pm. FYI, I won't be able to post as many pictures once we're at sea, which I think is why I posted so many this time.

Welcome to the LARISSA cruise!

2009-12-31T10:12:00.004-05:00

Right now, everyone is busy working in port. There is cargo to load, labs to set up, and endless problems to solve. But it will all be worth it once we set sail on January 2^nd.

Here's the Research Vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer, otherwise known as the NBP.

And here's cargo being moved to one of the ships. I'm not sure if it's for us or for the ship docked next to us. You can see the US Antarctic Program logo on the container.

I don't have any science to report on yet, but I've been learning a lot. Docks are really exciting places because there are so many different projects going on at once. A big part of working on a ship is helping other people, so I spent most of yesterday helping the people who take samples of mud from the seafloor. You'll learn more about why they do that later on, but they didn't need me to understand – they just needed help. Once they get the mud, which they call sediment, on the ship, there has to be a way to store it. It turns out that the best way to do this is to take PVC plastic rain gutters and cut them so that the sediment can go inside them. It's the cutting that takes so long, because it has to be done very neatly and carefully. Here's what we used to do it:

That's called a bandsaw, and it has a very sharp blade. That white stuff you see is little pieces of PVC. I was covered in it by the end of the day! But we got the work done, which is the important part.

Destination: Antarctica! (updated)

2009-11-11T16:35:00.004-05:00

If you've made it to this blog, I'm hoping that you're interested in my upcoming trip to Antarctica. I'm a graduate student in oceanography at Columbia University, and I work with middle school students once a week. While I'm at sea, I work with my students via this blog.

Please feel free to look over the posts from my last research cruise in the Philippines. The upcoming cruise is a little different, but I'll be posting about similar topics. I'll also be doing my own science fair project for my students to follow as they work on their projects.

I'm hoping to expand this blog to include more schools this time. If you're a teacher and would like to use this blog in your classroom at any grade level, please email me and let me know what types of posts would be helpful for you. Any registered Google/Open ID user can comment now!

More information about the cruise, which is part of the LARISSA project, can be found here. Please feel free to email me with any questions.

Home Again

2009-03-23T15:29:00.005-04:00

I made it home! I’m very, very jetlagged but I want to post one more time. In my very first post, I listed three goals. How did I do on each of them?

1. Post to the blog at least five days per week. I did it! Yay!

2. Finish at least 80% of the changes that I need to make to the paper that I’m writing. This one is a little harder to measure, but I think I did it. I’ve made most of the big changes and gave my adviser a revised copy. When I get it back from him, I’ll have a better sense of how I did.

3. Work well with all of you at DLMS! This one is up to you to tell me. Did you learn from the blog? Did you enjoy it? Did you see how awesome it is to be a scientist?

And here I am, controlling the winch! I’ll see you all back in school. But before I finish this post, I need to say thank you to the people who made this blog possible:

Thanks to the captain and crew of the R/V Melville for running a great ship and letting me photograph everything.

Thanks to the chief scientist for an awesome cruise and for being so supportive of this blog.

Thanks to everyone on both watches for helping out.

Thanks to Drew, the chief, Kyla, Zach, Suzanne, Alette, Pach, and everyone else who specifically helped with the blog.

Thanks to my mother for reading the blog every day and sending me comments.

Thanks to your teachers, Ms. Blomberg, Ms. Brooks, and Ms. Caldwell for working with me on this project and to your principal for supporting them.

Thanks to Rob Quatrone and Sara Scovronick at CERC for making this happen.

Thanks to Bob Newton and Nancy Degnan for running the LEEFS program that brought me to DLMS.

And last but not least, thanks so much to all of you, who made this a really fun and special cruise for me. You guys rock and I can’t wait to see everyone in school again!

Mapping the Journey

2009-03-20T04:46:00.002-04:00

We’re almost back in port! We finished our last CTD station, number 126, and now we’re packing up. Here is a really, really cool map of where we’ve been:

Wow! What’s going on here? A few different things
- The arrows represent the movement of water on the surface. Longer arrows mean the water was moving faster
- The color of the arrow shows the surface water temperature. Red is warmer, blue is cooler.
- The locations of the arrows follow the cruise track, so you can see where we’ve been

This is called a vector plot (the arrows are called vectors) and they’re a great way to show a lot of data in a small space.

Dragging

2009-03-19T04:31:00.002-04:00

A mooring is made of a heavy anchor and some scientific instruments. In between the anchor and the instruments is an acoustic release. We stick a wire in the water and the water sends out a sound. The acoustic release hears that sounds, responds with a sound of it’s own, and releases the mooring. Today, the acoustic releases responded but didn’t release.

So what did we do? We dragged for the mooring. That means that we put hooks on a wire and had the winch let the wire out into the ocean. Then we drove the ship in a big circle around the spot on the ocean floor where the mooring was. Then we started pulling the wire back in.

The wire is very heavy, so the plan is that it tightens like a noose around the mooring, snags it, and brings it to the surface. But lots of things can go wrong. We can snag a rock, or an old fishing net, or nothing at all. We can scratch and damage the instruments with the wire. Worst of all, once the wire does snag something, there is a lot of tension on the wire.

How much tension? At some points, there were 10,000 pounds of tension on the wire. If that wire had snapped, it would have been very dangerous. Ten thousand pounds of tension is the same as the weight of two and half SUVs.

Dragging for a mooring is a big risk. It takes a lot of time (time that would have been spent gathering more data) and could hurt someone, and might not even work. On the other hand, if we don’t drag, we’ll never get the instrument or the data it has been collecting for months.

So what would you do? Would you drag for the mooring or move on?

When I get home, I'll tell you whether or not we recovered the mooring. Right now, I still don't know.

Going to Sea

2009-03-18T06:52:00.006-04:00

Scientists go to sea for all sorts of reasons. We write those reasons in proposals, and then someone gives us the money we need to do our research. But we also go to sea because we love the sea. This cruise is almost over, and I don’t know how long it will be before I get to go again. Even though I’m homesick for New York while I’m here, I sometimes get homesick for the sea when I’m in New York.

When I’m at home and thinking about the ocean, I sometimes like to read what other people have written about it. Here is one my favorite poems in the whole world, by e.e. cummings:

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

The Engine Room

2009-03-17T07:01:00.002-04:00

The Chief Engineer gave us a tour of the ship’s engine room. It was interesting to learn how the ship works. The engine room is very loud, so we had to wear earplugs. Here are the highlights:

Thanks Chief! Also thanks to Zach & Kyla for taking pictures.

And in case you’re wondering, nearly everyone on the ship calls everyone else by their first names. The exceptions are the chief and the captain, who get called by their titles.

Thrills & Chills & Rainbows

2009-03-16T11:36:00.005-04:00

Last semester, Ms. Caldwell invited me to participate in her advisory. I really liked it, so I thought I’d use what I learned there and tell you about my own thrills & chills for this cruise.

The biggest thrill of all is that the chief scientist wants to write a paper about the solitons with me and my friend Zach. He’s been really happy with my work on the LADCPs and on the solitons, and told me so. Being a graduate student can be very hard because everyone expects your best work all the time. Sometimes you do your best work and it that still isn’t good enough. But this time my work is being noticed and appreciated, so I’m very proud of myself.

The biggest chill is missing home. I have friends out here, but I miss my friends at home and my family. I email with my mother every day, but it’s not the same as talking to her.

When you’re at sea, you sometimes forget about the outside world completely and only the ship seems real. Keeping this blog has made this cruise different than other ones because I feel connected to all of you.

Here are a few more thrills
- The solitons! Solitons are awesome.
- Seeing sunsets! I love sunsets.
- Having time to read books. I read a lot at sea.
- Getting to fix things. I’m good at fixing things, and even though I get frustrated when they break, fixing them makes me feel satisfied.

And some more chills, too
- Never having a day off. We work 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I’d like at least an evening off, but that doesn’t happen here
- Not being able to decide what to eat. The food has been great out here, but I’m not always in the mood for what the cooks are making.

Here’s a photo of one more thrill:

And now a science question: what makes rainbows?

What is a soliton?

2009-03-14T10:25:00.002-04:00

To help me explain, I want you to think about these situations:

Situation #1: Imagine jumping in to the water. Waves would spread out in all directions around you, making bigger and bigger circles.

Situation #2: Now imagine that the when you jump in the water, waves only spread in one direction. There’s no circle getting bigger, just a line of waves traveling in one direction at a constant speed.

I’ve jumped in water lots of times, and the waves have always acted like situation #1. Situation #1 is also how waves have acted when I’ve thrown things in the water or seen fish jump out of the water. It’s just how waves act.

Solitons are a special kind of wave that acts like situation #2. Really. This is one of those times when science gets weird. It doesn’t happen often, but if the tides are just right, the time of year is just right, and the location is just right, solitons will form.

One of the really wonderful things about being a scientist is that I’m allowed to forget everything else for a while to study just one thing. Imagine the most interesting thing you’ve done in school all year and getting to do that for as long as you like. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last few days with solitons. I’ve been looking at figures, equations, and maps, trying to understand everything that has happened.

An important thing to know about solitons is that they’re internal waves. That means that they’re not on the surface of the water, but they’re inside the water where colder and warmer water meet (7th & 8th grade science club: remember the tank experiment?). Most of our measurements have to be below the water. However, there is a sign on the surface of the water that a soliton is going by: a band of breaking waves in an otherwise calm sea. It looks so unusual that sailors back in 1922 wrote about it but had no idea why it happened. Here’s what it looks like:

The whitecaps (those breaking waves) might not look big, but they were stretched out in a huge line across the horizon. It didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before.

Don’t worry if you don’t really understand what a soliton is, or why they're important. Most college students don’t even know what an internal wave is, and certainly don’t know what solitons are. So you’re already ahead of the game.

The Bridge, and What I Learned There

2009-03-13T10:21:00.006-04:00

In the last two days, I’ve spent more time on the bridge than I have on all my other cruises put together. The bridge of a ship is like the cockpit of a plane: it has the best view, and it’s where all of the controls are. I was there to watch for solitons on the ship’s radar. I’ll post about solitons soon, but while I was waiting for them I learned so much that I had to share it with you.

Really cool thing #1 that I learned on the bridge: ships use flags to communicate.
We fly the United States flag, and when we’re in port we also fly the flag of the country we’re visiting, as a sign of respect. If we need a pilot we have a flag to request it, and if there’s already a pilot on board we have a flag to indicate that. If two ships pass each other at sea, they each lower and then raise their flags as a way of saying hello. We also fly the flag of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, which operates the R/V Melville. Here’s Ian, the second mate, holding the Scripps flag:
And here are some more flags, rolled up neatly:

Really cool thing #2 that I learned on the bridge: ships have secret codes for weather.
All over the world, ships record the weather that they see. In many places, those are the only records of weather, so they’re pretty important. But it would be confusing if everyone wrote about the weather in their own words, and it would take too long to read! So there’s a secret code for writing down the weather:

And here is a log sheet with the some of the codes written in:

Do you think you’d be able to keep track of all of those numbers? Ian says he’s been doing this so long that he knows most of them by heart.

Really cool thing #3 that I learned on the bridge: it’s fun to be on the bridge.
The bridge is located at the top of the ship. From there, you can see everyone out on deck and anything else happening in the water. The captain and the chief scientist were both came up too, and we watched for the solitons together and talked about our work. Here’s a view of the first way that I saw them: a line of dots on the radar:

The dot in the middle is the ship and the blue circle marks a distance of about 1 nautical mile (1.2 miles) away from us. That line of yellowish dots represents the first soliton that we saw. So what is a soliton? I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Wildlife

2009-03-12T06:48:00.001-04:00

There was a request for wildlife photos. Here’s what I’ve seen so far:

- Birds in flight. They tend to be too far away to photograph clearly.

- Fish under water. Have you ever tried photographing fish under water? It works quite well if you, the camera, and the fish are all under water. When only one of you is, it tends to fail.

- An insect on deck. I’ve seen one, when we were near land. It flew away.

- As I mentioned earlier, I did see some whales but wasn’t fast enough to get any pictures.

But I finally have a wildlife photo for you! Here it is:

Yes, that’s a squid. Very soon, it will be bait, but right now it’s still a squid. I touched it and it was slightly slimy.

The Cups, Part II & The Big Yellow Thing

2009-03-11T08:29:00.007-04:00

Just one more batch of cups left! I just pulled some very nice shrunken cups off of the CTD. Here are the cups tied on to the CTD before deployment:

See those long grey things? They’re bottles for collecting seawater. Here’s Jake, our winch operator, getting ready to start the cast:

His job is to make sure that the CTD goes in and out of the water without any problems. He also needs to make sure that the CTD doesn’t hit the sea floor! If it did, the instruments could be damaged. Jake is watching Drew’s hand signals so he knows when to raise and lower the CTD:

Now we’re going to fast-forward about three hours to when the cast is coming out of the water. People are waiting with poles to attach hooks to the CTD. The hooks are tied to the tag lines, which let us control the CTD as it comes on deck:

And here it is with your cups still tied on:

After the casts, scientists take bottles of seawater collected at different depths back to their labs on the ship and on land:

Q & A with class 8Awesome

2009-03-10T02:48:00.001-04:00

Hi everyone! It’s great to hear from all of you. You asked some excellent questions, and I’m going to try to answer all of them.

-What happened to your friend Jake's bracelet? Did it shrink? Did it break? Did it remain unchanged?
Jake’s bracelet came up looking exactly the same as it did when it went down. But now he can tell all of his friends that his bracelet has been down to the bottom of the ocean.

-How do the drawings look? Have they changed size too? Can you still read our names?
The drawings are very clear and very tiny! Yes, I can still read your names

-Can we get more data from the big yellow thing (Shaliyah)... AKA the CTD?
I’ll do some more posts with CTD data. I’m also going to try and find someone to explain to you how all of the instruments on the CTD work.

-Will you be going underwater at all too? Can you send cameras underwater?
We’re all staying on the boat. People do send cameras underwater, but we won’t be. Sorry about that. Most of the things we study can’t be seen even with a camera – they have to be understood from the data.

-Try to get pictures of wildlife too!
I’m trying! I saw whales yesterday but by the time I ran inside and got my camera, they were gone.

-What's the next experiment you're going to do?
Check out the post about the mooring! That’s a big experiment. The next one will be our study of solitons. Solitons are a very special kind of wave. I’ll do a post on them once I collect data.

And now for the sunsets:
Abby – we don’t have daylight savings time in the Philippines. But I agree that it could have effected the sunsets if I thought I was taking my photos at the same time every day and forgot to account for the changing of the clocks!

Bryan – they may have been at slightly different times of day, you’re right. I think that the bottom photo was taken earlier in the evening than the middle photo was.

Ms. Brooks – I agree. There’s lots of pollution in Philippine cities, and when the wind blows it towards us we can even smell it. Lots of pollution can mean a prettier sunset.

Alvin – yes, they were taken at different locations. But the locations were similar, and not too far apart.

Shaliyah – excellent observation. The size of water droplets can change the type of cloud we see. Also, as with Ms. Brooks’ answer, whatever is in the atmosphere, whether it’s pollution or water vapor, can change the way we see the colors of sunset.

Class 8A, you are living up to your name! I can’t wait to see you all when I get back.

And class 71 – it is cool that you were checking the blog while I was posting! It must have been around 1 or 2 in the afternoon your time. I work from noon to midnight Philippine time, but last night I was working late and decided to post before I went to sleep.

Mooring Recovery

2009-03-09T13:06:00.001-04:00

Here's a video of the mooring recovery we did today. Drew, our
Restech, is going to tell you what's going on. First, here are some
definitions that will help you understand him:

- a mooring is a scientific instrument that gets attached to an anchor
and left in the ocean to collect data
- a buoy is something that floats in the water - in this case, it's
part of the mooring
- lifelines are cables that act as railings around the ship

Let me know if there's anything else that's unclear. Also, I'd like to thank Drew for doing the voiceover and Suzanne and Pach for doing the video recording.

CTD Deployment

2009-03-07T23:40:00.004-05:00

You’ve seen the data that comes from doing a CTD cast. But how do we actually collect the data? We have to put the CTD in the water very carefully, to avoid damaging our instruments or our ship. To do that, we use a winch, which includes a pulley (remember those, 6th graders?). Here’s a video of the process:

A few highlights:
- The guy making the funny hand signals is Drew. He’s our Resident Marine Technician, or restech. The hand signals tell the winch operator what to do.
- That’s me in the lower right corner! I’m running a tag line, one of the ropes that keeps the CTD from swinging too wildly. There’s not much risk when the seas are calm like they are in this video, but you can imagine what happens in rough seas. The other tag line is run by Gerald, who is a member of the Philippine Coast Guard.
- Look at the CTD going down in the water. Can any of the 7th graders tell me what is happening to the light underwater to make it look like that?
- I left the soundtrack as it was so that you could hear what we hear. Ships are loud places.

Finally, thanks to Alette for filming!

Sightseeing

2009-03-07T10:28:00.003-05:00

I go to sea for the science, but one of the things that keeps me coming back is the beauty of working on a ship. I’ve been giving you a lot of data recently, so I want to balance that with some of the sights I’ve been seeing.

This is a boat loaded up with boats! I’ve never seen anything like it before:

This is last night’s sunset. It was spectacular:

And here is tonight’s sunset – just a day apart but very different:

The Cups, Part I

2009-03-06T09:09:00.012-05:00

The first batch of cups is back! I have to sink them in batches of about 50 because I don’t have a bag big enough to hold them all. We sent them down at station 49, located at 8°45’ N, 122°44’E. Those numbers after the degree symbol are called minutes, and they represent parts of a degree. There are 60 minutes in one degree, just like there are 60 minutes in one hour.

So how did they turn out? Well, here they are in the lab…

And here they are in the bag (the green tape keeps them from getting stuck together)…

And here’s my friend Drew securing them to the CTD frame…

And here they are with my friend Jake’s good-luck bracelet that he wanted sent down too…

And here’s the CTD going into the water…

And here they are, safe on the ship…

And here I am, cutting them off the CTD to bring home to you!

Look how empty the bag seems to be! It’s the same number of cups that I started with; they’re just very small. You know that their size has decreased, what do you think has happened to their density?

Science Club Q & A

2009-03-05T05:32:00.002-05:00

Hi 6th grade science club! I hope everyone did well on their final exams. I wrote a separate post on seawater and density, but here are some answers to your other questions:

Irving – I was seasick, and it was terrible! We had rough seas for a few hours and I felt awful. But now I’m better.

Daniella – I’m eating fish every day, but it’s not local fish. We’re only allowed to go fishing when we’re far away from land or fishing boats, and that’s not too much of the time. We should have some good fishing later on in the cruise though.

Bryan, Nachary, & Andrea – Your cups are safe in my room. I’m going to sink them once we’re out in the Sulu Sea, which is deeper than where we are now. And I promise to take plenty of pictures.

Shaina – I have not seen any sharks, but my friend Drew saw one. I’m sorry that I missed it. But I have seen squid and flying fish.

I do have a sunburn even though I’ve been wearing sunscreen. But it’s not too bad. I’d like to see your barometers when I get back. We have a barometer on the ship too, and right now we’re at 1006.8 millibars.

Life at sea has been very busy because my ADCP cables keep breaking! It’s very frustrating. But at sea, when something breaks, you learn how to fix it. Here’s the rewiring we did:

It was a little like science club, since we didn’t know if it would work until we tried it. I know it looks weird, but it’s holding up so far!

Density & Seawater

2009-03-05T04:50:00.008-05:00

Density can be a really hard idea to understand. To start, try thinking back to a time when you were in a swimming pool, and how hard or easy it was to float. Then think about floating in the ocean. It’s easier to float in the ocean than in a pool because ocean water has a higher density. As water gets more and more dense, it’s easier and easier for you to float in it.

So why is seawater so dense? And what changes the density of seawater?

1) Temperature. This is the big one. Cold water is denser than hot water. Remember drawing the molecules in solids, liquids, and gases? In liquids, the molecules aren’t as tightly packed as in solids, but they’re tighter than in a gas. High temperatures make molecules move faster, so they can’t stay close together. A hot liquid looks a little more like a gas, and cold liquid looks a little more like solid:2) Salinity. Salinity is a measure of how much salt is in the water. Salt makes water denser, but a change in temperature will have a bigger effect on density than a change in salinity will. The salt molecules keep the water molecules closer together by holding on to them through chemical bonds.

3) Pressure. Picture what each of those boxes I drew above would look like if you sat on them. All of the molecules would be pushed together! That’s what happens to the molecules in the seawater that’s down at the bottom of the ocean. The weight of all that water on top of them packs them tightly.

Here are plots of temperature, salinity, and density from our last station:
A few tips to help you understand these graphs:
- The units for pressure are “db” which stands for decibars. The cool thing is that in the ocean, a decibar of pressure is equal to a meter of water. So when you see 100 db, you know it’s 100 m down.
- The units for salinity are “psu.” That stands for practical salinity units, which doesn’t really mean anything at all. So don’t worry about it! Just remember that higher numbers mean saltier water.
- The units for density are kg/m³. That tells you how much one cubic meter of water would weigh. So when you see a density of 1030 kg/m³, that means that one cubic meter of water (about 260 gallons) weighs 1030 kg (about 2,270 pounds). For comparison, tap water at room temperature has a density of about 1000 kg/m³.

So if you were holding a gallon of tap water, it would weigh 8.3 pounds. But if you were holding a gallon of seawater, it would weigh 8.6 pounds.

Station 22

2009-03-04T03:38:00.004-05:00

Life on a ship can be lots fun, but we also work very hard. By now you’re probably wondering what we do all day. Most of the time, we do CTD casts. CTD stands for conductivity (a measure of how salty the water is), temperature, and depth. We put the instrument package, which contains the CTD, LADCPs, and few other things, into the water on a very strong wire. Here’s a picture of the CTD on the package:

It’s the odd-looking thing in the middle of the pictures with all of the wires attached to it. You can see one of the LADCPs on the left.

Later, I’ll try to get a video of the deployment (when we put the package in the water) and recovery (when we take it out of the water). For now, I’m going to show you the data from a recent CTD station, number 22.

Normally we can’t distribute data from a cruise until two years after collection. Since we did the work, we get to publish our interpretations of the data first! However, the chief scientist of the cruise, Dr. Arnold Gordon, is letting you have the data early as long as you promise not to publish before he does.

Here’s a graph of the temperature data:

There’s a lot we can learn from this graph! First, look at the axes. What are the units? How big is the range? Look carefully at the y-axis and the direction in which numbers increase. Is this how we usually make graphs?

Once you know how the graph is structured, you can start working with the data. What happens to the temperature as you go deeper in the water? Does it increase? Decrease? How quickly does the temperature change with depth? Why does the temperature change in this pattern?

Remember, this is the temperature during one cast. Would we get different results if we tried it again? What about a cast nearby – would the results look the same? There are a lot of questions you can ask about these data. Let me know what questions you want to answer, and I’ll try to supply the data that you need.

Cruising

2009-03-01T23:06:00.009-05:00

The cruise is underway! Here is the view we had when we left Manila:

In order to leave Manila Bay, we needed a pilot to guide us out. Normally the word “pilot” refers to the person flying an airplane, but it’s sometimes used for boats, too. Because Manila Bay is such a busy place, the government requires pilots who know the bay very well to help the captains steer the ships. Here is the pilot boat on our starboard side:

Our what? At sea, you don’t use right and left to describe locations within the ship. It would be too easy to get confused – if you’re facing the back of the ship, then left becomes right! So we have four directions: forward, aft, starboard, and port. If you’re facing forward (the front of the ship), port is on your left, starboard in on your right, and aft (or after) is behind you. The front of the ship is called the bow, and the back is called the stern:

If your classroom were a ship, where would the bow be? The stern? What direction (forward, aft, port, or starboard) would you have to go to reach the door?

Ready to Sail

2009-02-27T03:30:00.005-05:00

It’s been a busy few days! Since I arrived in Manila on Tuesday, I’ve been working hard to set up my equipment for the cruise. I work with a system called ADCP, which stands for Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler. What does that mean?

Acoustic means having to do with sound.
Doppler has to do with the way sounds change pitch. I’ll explain more later, but the Doppler effect is also how speed guns work. The eight graders used those to measure the speeds of cars near DLMS, so the rest of you can ask them about that.
Currents are the movements of water in the ocean – remember the East Australian Current from the turtles in Finding Nemo.
Profiler means that it produces a profile of the whole water column, not just at a single depth.

By now you’ve probably noticed that there are lots of special names for things at sea. If I use a term that you don’t know, please ask me to define it.

At sea, I work with ADCPs that are mounted on the bottom of the ship, called SADCPs (for Shipboard ADCP) and ones that are lowered into the water with other instruments, called LADCPs (for Lowered ADCP). The SADCP system is easy to use; you turn it on at the beginning of the cruise and then just check it to make sure that it’s working. The LADCPs are a lot more work! They have to be turned off and on every time we put them in the water and they have very complicated wiring. That means when they don’t work, it can be very hard to figure out what’s wrong with them.

My friend Zach works with the LADCPs too. I work from noon to midnight and he works from midnight to noon. But when we’re still in port and at the beginning of the cruise, everyone is awake most of the time. We spent a long time together making the system work today and yesterday. Here is the completed setup:

Later, I’ll go through everything in this picture. For now, just notice the two yellow cylindrical machines – those are the LADCPs – and Zach.

Here’s the ship in port:

We should have left by now, but we don’t have permission to yet. This happens a lot, so we’re all trying to patient. I'll post again after we sail!

2009-02-22T17:00:00.005-05:00

Hi everyone, and welcome to the blog! This is like the first day of school for me: I want to make a good impression, set some goals, and get settled into a new routine.

Overview
This blog is a way for all of us to communicate while I’m at sea. I’ll be showing you what it means to be a scientist at sea and working with your teachers so that you can be part of our science team. That means you’ll be analyzing data, making hypothesis, explaining results, and maybe even designing some experiments.

My goals while at sea
1. Post to the blog at least five days per week. I know that some posts will be longer than others, and some posts will be better than others, but I want to be posting nearly every day. Some days will probably have more than one post so that I can write different things for each grade, so I’m setting this goal around days that I post, not the number of posts.

2. Finish at least 80% of the changes that I need to make to the paper that I’m writing. I recently completed a goal that I set earlier this year, which was to have a research paper of mine accepted to a scientific journal. I worked very hard towards that goal and now I’m feeling happy and proud of myself for achieving it. But I need to make some changes before the paper can published, so that’s my new goal.

3. Work well with all of you at DLMS! Just like you, I have planner where I write down all of the work I have to do. I like being very organized and knowing what is expected of me. For me, working on this project is taking a risk because nobody can tell me how it will turn out or what the finished product will look like. Since this is something new, I’ll probably make some mistakes along the way. It will be your job to tell me when that happens and help me fix any problems. At the same time, it will be my job to listen to what you have to say.

Right now, I’m still at home, packing. I leave for the airport in a few hours and then I’ll fly to Manila. My next post probably won’t be until Wednesday, when I get to the ship. Until then, please tell me in the comments: what would you like to see in this blog?

This is a picture of the route I'll take from New York (United States to Seoul (Korea), to Manila (the Philippines). Look how close we go to the north pole! Is this the shortest route the plane can fly?