Journals 2005/2006

Denis Costello
North High School, Torrance, California

"The Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms" R/V Atlantis July 6 - 26

Journal Index: July 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13       14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20       21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27

July 8, 2005
A Rough Start

After retiring to my cabin last night, the seas did pick up. The ship pitched back and forth leaving me awake for the entire night. After waking up at 5:30 to start my watch, I headed toward the main deck to release water in the CTD's Niskin bottles from last night.

After a long transit, we finally reached our next station, LAB-1. The LAB survey line is one of 12 survey lines that we will sample from. Each survey line starts near shore and continues away from shore (with 7 - 12 sampling stations). They are given acronyms to match a location near shore and the number of the stations increases with increasing distance away from shore. At each station, the CTD will and I will sample for nutrients and chlorophyll. Samples for chlorophyll analysis will be collected using 500 mL brown bottle, so the phytoplankton will not be shocked by UV light and nutrients will be collected in 15 mL Falcon® tubes. My work will be used to verify what is seen in satellite imagery and other diagnostic data.

A theoretical survey grid and locations of moored arrays. View full version pop-up.

Sampling along the LAB line started at 9 am. Since we were near shore, the CTD cast did not take long. This meant that I had to quickly obtain my sample water and filter because the next station was only 30 minutes away. The transit time from each station increased as we got into deeper water (deeper casts), which allowed me time to prepare test tubes for the next group of samples.

After the last cast during my watch (~ 6pm), I got some dinner, went up to my cabin and quickly feel asleep.

Here I am filtering samples to calibrate our instruments. View full version pop-up.		Between stations, Ben Beall (at left) battles Julian Herndon in a game of ping-pong. Ping-pong, foosball and movies were our usual diversions from work. View full version pop-up.