As I am writing this, the final hours of our research cruise aboard the R/V Thomas G. Thompson are winding down. All in all, I have to say it’s been a great trip. This cruise was my first extended amount of time aboard a research vessel and it most definitely exceeded expectations. The general atmosphere over the course of our trip was much more relaxed than expected; the high point of the trip for me was most definitely our “News Years Day Extravaganza” which involved an egg toss (which my partner Ben and I proudly claimed first place 
in), a water balloon fight, and water balloon volleyball among other things. My meals are something that I take definitely take very seriously and the fantastic food cooked by our chefs definitely helped contribute to my wonderful experience. For dinner tonight they treated us with a salad bar, turkey, stuffing, steak, mashed potatoes and gravy. It’s safe to say that I packed on a few (much needed) pounds this trip.
Living on a boat was something that took some getting used to for me. Dealing with sloshing ballast water beneath my room and constantly having to latch doors were things that I have never had to deal with before. The first few days were a little bit rough but I’ve become quite comfortable on the Thompson and must say that I’ll be missing it when we leave tomorrow. Despite the constant rocking of the boat (which, I must say, makes playing ping pong quite difficult) and the unrelenting noise, I (surprisingly) don’t think I’ve ever slept as good as I have while aboard this ship. Every night I’m exhausted and am barely able to make it to bed before I pass out. In fact, one night I was so tired I couldn’t even make it to bed and ended up passing out in the hallway in front of my door (okay, not really but I sure thought I was going to a couple+ of times).
I must say that I am quite happy with how my research project has come along so far. I am examining how a La Nina event might affect productivity in the waters surrounding the Hawaiian Islands. To do this, I collected water samples from 3 depths (150 m, 50 m, and the surface) from 5 different sights. I incubated some samples in a clear box out on the fantail that was exposed to sunlight and incubated other samples in a box covered with a plastic tarp. I then performed Winkler titrations to determine the oxygen content of each water sample. The “dark box” (with the plastic tarp over it) represents the oxygen used up by respiration and by subtracting the oxygen concentration of the samples from the “dark box” from the “light box”, I should get the net primary productivity (the “light box” represents photosynthesis and respiration; subtracting the oxygen values of the “dark box” from the “light box” will yield me the amount of oxygen produced by photosynthesis). I still need to convert some of my results to grams of Carbon but so far I’ve been very happy with my results so far. I can’t thank Kathy Newell enough for all of the help that she’s provided and for being so patient (God knows I would have jumped off the boat long ago if I had to put up with all of my questions).
I don’t want to drag this on too long so I’d just like to extend one final thanks to all of the professors, teaching assistants, crew, and marine techs on board the Thompson that made this whole trip possible. Thank you!
- Stephen R. Pang
