Journals 2006/2007

Peggy Deichstetter
St. Edward High School, Elgin, IL

"Arctic Kelp Bed Study" July 16 - August 3, 2006

Journal Index: July 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23        24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 31 August 1 - 2 - 3 Additional Resources

July 30, 2006
AHHHHHHHHHH....Summer in Alaska!

I started the morning by putting more ice in the aquarium. Next, I filled six Ziploc bags with seawater and put them in the freezer. Katrin had put aside several alga that needed to pressed. Next, I checked all the recycled Ziplocs for leaks. Since we're using fresh water ice in the salt water aquarium, it is important that the bags don't leak.

Aquarium. View full version pop-up.

At ten o'clock Ken says, "Are you ready to go?" What a beautiful day to do water sampling! The sun is shining. The water was flat. The temperature was in the high 50's. We collect out gear and load it in the truck. We drive to the boat and load up the boat. Ted and John launch the boat. Since there is no pier they will pick us up where the water is shallow so that we don't have to wade so far.

Docking the boat. View full version pop-up.

Ken has hooked up a second light meter which will compare the amount of light hitting the boat to the amount of light reaching different depths. By 11:15, we reach our first site. Ted and John are responsible for getting the water samples with the Van Dorn bottle. Ken takes the measurements; light attenuation, temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen at 2 and 4 and sometimes 7 meters, and I record them in the logbook.

We continue this for 29 more stations. We stopped for lunch on a sand bar named Jeanette Island. Because it is such a beautiful day we take our time and record extra data such as the temperature and salinity at the bottom.

Jeanette Island. View full version pop-up.		Jeanette Island (2). View full version pop-up.

We arrive back at 5:30pm. Steve flew up from Anchorage to help with the water sampling process. He has the equipment ready to go and we get started filtering 100 milliliter of each of the samples for chlorophyll. Each filter is collected and placed in a brown collection vial. The vials are placed in a black container and put in a black plastic bag. These samples are then frozen. They will be analyzed later in Ken's lab in Texas.

Docking the boat (2). View full version pop-up.

We take a dinner break around 7:00 and return to the lab to finish the chlorophyll samples by nine. Tomorrow we will do the TSS filters.