Last day on land

Lisa, Will, and I are here in onboard the Endeavor, sitting in the main lab area. Surprisingly, we have wireless internet, which we were told would work throughout the duration of the cruise :) Sitting in the lab, you can feel that the boat is rocking, but we are still docked so it's nothing big. Sea sick...so far so good

Our journey began yesterday around 4am; Will picked us up and took us to the Dayton airport where we flew to Philadelphia, then connected to Providence, Rhode Island. Dr. Hammerschmidt left Thursday in the early morning hours with the trailer and Wright State Departmental van and was there at the airport to pick us up. We had lunch at a Rose Beach Cafe in a little historic town about an hour from the airport. Afterwards, we drove to where the Endeavor was docked to unload the van. When we first got out of the car, the ship was incredible. It was a lot larger than I expected. We got a tour and some quick ground rules for the ship, then spent the rest of the afternoon unloading and unpacking. Later on we went to the hotel and out to eat where Dr. Hammerschmidt and Lisa enjoyed some New England specialty South County clam chowder.

We got to the ship today around 9AM and have been busy setting everything up. Dr. Hammerschmidt and Will have been on the top deck securing the incubation chambers they built (pictures of those once they're complete!) and Lisa and I have been in the lab setting up our stations, and just helping out wherever needed. Everything on the ship has to be tied down or secured in some way. We can drill into our lab tables so a lot of stuff is screwed down, and more fragile things are tied with string. For the rest of the day, the plan is to get everything set up and maybe have time to go over our SOPs. SOP stands for standard operating procedure and includes detailed instructions and materials needed for our experiments. Tonight will be our first night sleeping on the ship, we set sail 8AM tomorrow!!!!

That's all for today!

-Katlin

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Today I hooked up the incubators for the water experiments and sediment cores spending a good portion of the morning in the sun. Unfortunately I forgot to put on some sun screen this morning and will be a little red tomorrow when we depart for station one. I am looking forward to tomorrow and beginning my set of experiments.

Brief discussion about the Incubators.

Dr. Hammerschmidt and I built three incubation chambers this summer. Two incubators for the water samples and one incubator for sediment cores. We had a little set back this morning with some minor damage to one of our incubators. One of the sediment incubator's corners was loose, but with a little duck tape and new sealant we we able to patch the side back together. The next repair to be completed on the incubator was to replace two legs on one of the shelves built to hold the sediment core upright. With a little ingenuity, we were able to screw wooden legs onto the shelf, but not before we broke a drill bit off in the old plastic leg while trying to fasten it to the shelf.

I don't know much about how the incubator works for the sediment cores since my experiments deal with the water column, but if you have any question feel free to ask and one of the science party will be able to explain more.

The incubators for water is where the 2 liter bottled of sea water spiked with Hg-200 and Hg-199 (labeled methyl mercury) will basically cook in the sun as sea water flows through the incubator. These samples will then be collected from the 2 liter bottles various times over the next 11 days, and then these samples will be frozen for further testing back at WSU. When we return to WSU the samples will be tested using an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer.

-Will