march21

Click on the question mark to ask the class about oceanography, Glacier Bay, or the cruise. Your question and answer will appear on the Questions page under Quick Links.

5:05 AM

Run and Dump

It’s 5:00 AM and my watch has been over for an hour. I’m currently in the middle of doing one of my incubations so I thought I’d take some time to share with you about our run and dump situation. I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but Glacier Bay National Park won’t let us dump our gray water inside the park limits and now it’s an issue. Gray water is the fresh water used by those aboard the Thompson for showering, hand washing, laundry and any other fresh water use excluding toilet water.

The Thompson gray water tank usually fills and dumps in transit about once a day with regular use. If you all remember, we’re spending 4 days inside the park. Under this constituent, we’ve been asked to conserve our fresh water usage to a very finite amount. No showers, no laundry, no running water while brushing your teeth… If we have to shower, then we’ve been asked to take navy showers: Get in, get wet, turn the water off, lather, rinse and get out.

We’ve lasted 3 days, but now our tank is full and must get dumped. Some of us on watch noticed it was full around 2:00 AM when there was a funky smell in the main lab that I was quoted saying “smells like a** soup”. We’ve currently stopped all research sampling to head out of the park to dump our gray water. It will be a 2 hour trip down and out, 2 hours to dump, and 2 hours back up to where we left. After the water has finished dumping, some of the students have requested to be notified immediately so they can take a shower. It’ll feel nice to be clean again. Until next time…

-Erwin

7:00 AM

Ocean Motions, The Subtle Sickness

Imagine white sails against a blue sky and a deep green sea. The wind is whipping about your face and tousling your hair. Now, turn your head towards the sun and feel it’s golden rays warm your face. Hmmm… relaxing yes? Oh! A spray of salty water just dusted your face! It’s tingly and fresh and a faint memory of seaweed lingers and nibbles for attention. Listen, white, sea birds are calling to each other! “Caww! Caaww!” They screech to each other. Silver fir, Douglas fir, sitka spruce, and cedar all vie with their neighbors for space in the mountains that pass your view. Fallen trees at the water’s edge mark a lost border dispute. Do you feel yourself at sea yet? Just wait… you’re almost there.

Now feel the motion of rocking waves beneath you. The waves are gentle and light. They are like a mother’s arm rocking you to sleep. You relax as your mind and memory explore this novel motion. You search your memory to see if you can recall anything quite like this. Nothing comes up; cars, trains, or airplanes cannot come close to imitating this. Their motions are jerky and singular in dimension. In a car, you speed up and slow down. There’s not much side to side motion and never up and down. It’s completely different on a ship. Even while at rest a ship is never completely still. Usually the boat will be rocking back and forth, up and down, but always with some degree of side-to-side motion. When it’s gentle, everybody relaxes and enjoys it. Almost everyone likes this feeling when they first experience it. But for some of us, this subtle motion has turned sinister. And, usually only at night. That is when it pounces! Like a kitten with sharp teeth and claws, it gnaws on you, wearing you down and when it finds a soft spot it sinks its needle like teeth in. “Ouch!” you say. “ Stop! You’re hurting me!” But the kitten is relentless and all it wants to do is play. With you.

Sometimes it’s a gang of kittens, constantly attacking from new angles and at all sides at all times. It’s easy to get used to a repetitive motion but in the open water it’s impossible to get used to the varying giant waves and their mercurial motion. It’s been our luck that most of our open water crossings have been at night when we’re trying to sleep. Our first Sunday marked the first day of serious waves during the day. We were traveling east in a Strait that bordered the Pacific Ocean. Huge, rolling waves were rocking the boat and the horizon was constantly moving. One moment you’d see the horizon and next it would be gone because the ship’s nose had taken a dive and all you could see was sky. (Check out Stefanie’s video to see what the waves were really like.) As the afternoon progresses more and more people are looking the worse for wear and pretty green around the gills. I had been feeling a little crummy the day before so at the onslaught of slightly large waves I decided to take preemptive action; enter Rick Kiel’s magical anti-nausea gum from Greece. After about an hour I was feeling fine, the waves were really big, and a lot of people were below decks calling Ralf on the big white phone. Later I decided to take a nap just in case the gum wore off before we were through the worst of it. Not surprisingly, most of us didn’t make it to dinner.

In the mean time, we’ve been in the protective waters of Glacier Bay so it’s been smooth sailing for the most part. We’ve got a stash of ginger tea, candied ginger, magic gum, and DRAMAMINE. I’m hoping the journey back will be just as much of an adventure as our trip up here. But without all of the cute little kittens.

-April

8:30 AM

Among several key events yesterday was the loss of one of our sediment traps. Although this is frustrating for the researcher to whom the trap represents a key data point, it is certainly not an uncommon event. Whenever you commit a piece of equipment to the ocean there is a very good chance that you won’t get it back. Here is some video showing the deployment of one of our sediment traps.

In yesterday’s case the line tethering several subsurface floats and the trap itself (which is maintained in position by an anchor) to a large surface float was severed by one of the ship’s props. Without the surface float the sediment trap is impossible to locate, and will remain in position indefinitely.

The following poem was found posted in the main lab sometime later.

Ode to a Net Trap

I still remember

watching you slip away

into the darkness of

eternal marine snow

will the stillborn sample

that we will never know.

in our final moments together

you were cold and distant

almost aloof

like glacial ice

wasn’t I the one

who shackled you up?

yet you turned on me

leaving me wounded

like the gaping hole in a

pearlink.

you tangled with the ship,

a doomed affair

even before you were united,

damn it - couldn't you see

the love would be unrequited?

I helped you survive pirates

in the Arabian Sea

‘learned to do the cross stitch

just to mend you

that time you were ripped

remember?

they say

“if you love something

set it free”

but they didn’t know you

like I did

yet maybe I didn’t know you

that well either

since you chose left me

I needed you

apparently you felt differently

but I will get the final word

I will just build another trap,

so sit down there all alone

and watch me move on

-anonymous

11:00 AM

March 21, 2008

Calculus and seasickness don’t mix. April (at left) and other students crunch the numbers on a physical oceanography test the day after heavy seas.

What’s that funky odor in the radiation van? Erwin, after three days of a no shower water restriction.

Killing time in the main lab. We’ve fallen into a pretty steady routing, with down time in between stations. Vikki, Carmela, Andy, Christine, and Aubrey wait for some action.