Saturday, August 23, 2008

Today I finished the last water collection for my incubation experiments. I have completed 2 out of 5 station for the actual incubation period of 96 hrs. At 24, 48, and 96 hrs I measure out about 300 mL from the 5 different 2 L bottles to test for methylation and demthylation of mercury, and at the 96 hr mark I also collect samples testing for bacteria count, total dissolved carbon, and total iron in the water.

Last night was a fun night collecting water. We watched small groups of a smaller species of squid swim around the surface water near the lights from the boat.

Today we watched dolphins swim along the waves created by the ship on our way to station 10.

Will

The dolphins were swimming by the front of the boat this morning! They like to swim and jump in the wake that the bow of the ship creates.

Lisa is filtering water for her inhibitor experiment. The helmet and vest are required when working outside near the J-frame (for zooplankton and water sampling) or A-frame (for sediment corer).

Kaitlin is determining the position of the box corer inside in the main lab from the transmissions emitted by the "pinger" on the corer.

Friday, August 22, 2008



Katlin operating the A-frame to lower the box corer into the water.


Tristan filtering water in the clean van. Tristan is wearing a gown, clean shoes, gloves, and a head cover to avoid any contamination of the samples.
The Mercury Team! From left to right: Dr. Bill Fitzgerald (Dr. Hammerschmidt's Ph D advisor and chief scientist on the cruise), Will Ehresman, Katlin Bowman, Lisa Romas, Dr. Chad Hammerschmidt.
Thursday night's sunset
Here's a picture of Will working hard on the water team! The woman in the yellow hat is Lynne, one of the ship's technicians. She is giving hand signals to the doghouse where another crew member is controlling the line. Will's job is to keep the rosette from swinging into the side of the boat; he does this with a tag line connected to the bottom that he can slide off once the rosette is in the water.
This was a core we did this morning at station 8. This sediment is from about 2020 meters bellow the surface. We had a giant brittle star (the kind that form into sand dollars) on top of the sediment that we had to pick off before we could take the samples!

Halfway Complete

Last night Tristan, Katlin and I watched the sun set for quite some time. The colors were so beautiful (deep orange, purple and blue) and the sky even seem textured. No matter how hard I tried, a camera could not do justice to capture the essence of the moment. We were hoping to see the green flash of light that sometimes occurs at sunset when it is really clear out , but we did not get a chance to see it. Perhaps on another cruise! Oh, I also saw what we think was a mola mola (see a photo I found on google below). It was pretty neat. I thought I saw a patch of algae or a skate and then I noticed a dorsal fin periodically pop out of the water. It was moving pretty slowly, rolling up and down (rather than jolting laterally like a shark would) and was by itself so that is how we inferred it to be this giant sunfish. I have only seen them on TV, so it was neat to finally see a part of one!



Today we reached station 8. The zooplankton and water samples were collected starting at 8 pm and we began our sediment coring at 3:30 AM this morning. The weather has been amazing lately. I was seasick a day or two ago and had to sleep it off for awhile; well, 17 hours! I never slept so much in my entire life. Luckily, Dr. Hammerschmidt and Katlin were able to cover my experiments for me. In fact, Dr. Hammerschmidt used to do all of our experiments on prior cruises (being Will's, Katlin's, mine and his own....No wonder they call him "The Mercury Man!").

Now that the wind has died down to about 6 knots and the swells have shrunk, I cannot get enough of the ocean! When I went to the aft of the boat this morning, the sky was dark blue and it was so calm I could even seen the stars (they were not darting all over the place like they do normally when we are moving). There was a half moon hanging high in the sky and you could just barely see the horizon. As we were waiting for the box corer to go down and back up nearly 2000 meters (yes, we reached the slope), the sky began turning orange and pink as the sun began creeping up in the sky. The boat seemed to slice the sky in half, demarcating night on one side and day on the other. Oh, it was phenomenal. The human body really does not have enough senses to truly capture the moment! This cruise is already scientifically invaluable; this is the first time anyone has collected sediment samples from the slope to study mercury! Yet, it is moments like this make that this cruise personally purposeful, as well.
~Lisa
It is now Thursday night at 8pm and we have just arrived at station 8. We are at the edge of the continental shelf now, so we are close to 2000 meters from the bottom; this means longer sampling times for the rosette and box coring! Earlier today at station 7 (we are in Canadian waters now) we did a successful box core at 1900 meters. We attached a “pinger” to the box core line that transmits sound waves between the ocean floor and the boat. Lynne, one of the ship’s technicians taught me how to read the signals on a computer screen inside the boat so I could tell what depth the box corer was at. I used a radio box to communicate with the crew controlling the box core line, so they would know when the corer was close to, and on the bottom.
The cruise is right on track now, so we were able to catch a nice break today. Lisa and I sat at the bow of the ship, while we were on transit to station 8, and just took some time to enjoy the view and the sun. Time on the boat is pretty bizarre; sometimes there is only three or four hours between each station, so when we are done sampling we take a few hours to nap, then we are up again to sample some more. This puts us working and sleeping at the oddest hours so it gets hard to keep track of the days! Even though the hours are long, every second is worth it. To be here in the middle of the ocean, collecting samples, and doing experiments is the experience of a lifetime and I am loving every moment of it! It’s also great to get to see the ocean at different times during the day and night. We have seen some great sun sets, sun rises, and I love the way the ocean looks at night.

I’ve been doing some whale watching in my spare time but seem to always miss them. Some of the students spotted dolphins and a couple of whale spouts yesterday, but I have yet to see any! We have seen some small needle fish swimming in the light of the boat while we are doing our box coring.

We have plenty of pictures to share with everyone, but we don’t seem to have a strong enough internet connection to upload any. Maybe I will be able to post some when we are closer to the coast, but I can for sure do some next weekend when we are back on land, that way you see for yourself what we have all been describing! Well, it’s now nap time for me. The zooplankton nets are going in outside right now, which means the water sampling will begin in about an hour or so. Because the ocean floor is so deep it will take a lot longer to send the rosette up and down so I should have some time to rest before sediment collection begins!
-Katlin

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

To the top is a picture of the box corer that we use to collect our sediment samples. Below is a picture of my experiment. The flux chambers here are in an incubation chamber (that is the black you see in the background). In my hand is a picture of the magnetic stir bar that keeps the water in motion.; this cap goes on the flux chamber below.
-Katlin
p.s. I finally got to see whales and dolphins today! We finished station 8 around 8am this morning and we will be arriving at station 9 at 5pm. The water is very calm today and I had some time to sit on the upper deck and enjoy the sun. The splashes from the whales and dolphins are easy to spot with the calm water, I've seen about 15 and counting!






Benthic Flux Chambers - Katlin's Experiment

Right now it is only day three of the cruise and it is already more than I could ever have expected. I am working on the sediment team, which are the last samples collected at each station. The sediment is collected in a box corer (picture to come soon!) and is designed to bring up an undisturbed sediment water interface. What fascinates me about the box corer is it's use of gravity to collect the samples. The corer is a rectangular box, with two large jaw-like structures attached to the bottom. When the corer is sent down to the ocean floor the tightness of the line and the weight of the corer holds open the jaws; when the corer hits bottom and the line goes slack, a pin is released snapping together the jaws and scooping up the sediment. At the same time a piece slides over the top of the box, trapping the water above the sediment. Now, inside the box is a little piece of the ocean floor; about 10in of sediment covered by 8in of water. The interesting part is that the jaws snap closed so fast, that the line between the water and sediment is undisturbed. The box corer allows us to reach down and pick up a little piece of the ocean floor and with these samples we can study how mercury is released from this benthic environment.



To collect from the box corer a plastic cylinder with two open ends is gently pushed down into the sediment. Placing a stopper in the top end of the cylinder creates a vacuum and the tube can be pulled out with sediment and water intact.



The purpose of my experiment is to study how mercury is released from floor of the ocean. Right now I have three cores from station 2 along with 10L of sea water collected from 5 meters above the ocean floor. The cores are placed in an incubation chamber located on the upper deck of the ship. The chamber is black to keep the inside dark and chilled to around 8 degrees Celsius so that the sediment cores are in an environment similar to ocean floor. Inside the chamber, the sediment cores have special caps with a magnetic stirring bar to create a gentle movement in the water, that would be present in natural conditions. Every 8, 12, and 18 hours the water in the chamber is collected and frozen for analysis back in the lab. A time 0 sample is also collected to measure the initial content of mercury in the sample, before introduction to the sediment chamber. New pore water is placed in the chamber to restart the experiment until the next time period. By doing this I will be able to see first of all how much mercury is being released from the sediments, and I will also be able to see if the release is gradual or more sudden.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Well, alot has happened since we left the port in Narragansett, RI. We arrived at station 1 around 6pm (after dinner) and began the deployment of our water sampling equipment. Will (WSU), Tristan Kading (Dr. Joop Varekamp's graduate advisee), Dr. Maria Andersson (Dr. Robert Mason's post-doctoral assistant) and Prentiss Balcom (Dr. William Fitzgerald's research assistant) are on the water team and were in charge of deploying the rosettes (which use the J-frame on the starboard or right side of the vessel). The first larger rosette (aka"senior") has one dozen 8 Liter collection bottles which Prentiss programs to open and close at various times/depths. It also has a CTD which is a multi probe that measures conductivity, temperature and depth. The smaller rosette which is deployed after the larger one is nicknamed"junior." Since it was our first station, it took a bit longer than anticipated to obtain the samples. Next, Michael Finiguerra (a graduate advisee of Dr. Hans Dam at the University of Connecticut) completed the zooplankton tow.

Then, at 4 AM, Allen Hutchins (a lab assistant with Prentiss Balcom and Dr. William Fitzgerald at the University of Connecticut), Katlin (WSU), Dr. Chad Hammerschmidt (WSU) and myself successfully completed the sediment coring in the aft of the boat (the stern or back part) using the A-frame. We started off the morning in a "star performance" huddle to boost our morale after an arduous day. We took 9 beautiful cores (there was practically no turbation at the sediment water interface) in less than 2 hours. We even noticed some interesting biota during the coring (e.g. mysid shrimp, etc.). Next, as a part of the sediment team I (as well as the rest of my team) processed samples for the next few hours. As a part of my experiment, I prepare 8 treatment solutions in 250 mL square glass media bottles for my assigned stations. Each solution contains a salt that inhibits or promotes various anaerobic bacteria that are suspected or known to play a role in methylating mercury. In other words, I am creating solutions that will kill or foster bacteria (that do not use oxygen - hence, they are anaerobic) that convert inorganic mercury into organic forms (s.a. monomethylmercury or MMHg) which are some of the forms harmful to organisms (e.g. these forms can (bio)accumulate in our bodies). Then, I pipette about 50 mL of each solution into three replicate sediment slurry samples (the bacteria live in the sediment) and spike the samples by adding Hg-200 which we will later measure on land to determine methylation. At various steps in the experiment, I also have to flush my solutions and samples with nitrogen gas (N2) to eliminate oxygen and maintain an anoxic environment. It may sound a bit complicated but it's actually straightforward and rather systematic. I'm definitely interested to see what the result are and get a better idea of who the main players are in Hg methylation in ocean sediments!
It's almost time for the sediment team to move on to station #2!!! We'll write again as soon as we get another chance.
~Lisa

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Welcome to the Endeavor


One of the state rooms, there are two students to each room. The "head" (restroom) is shared by two rooms.

This is a picture of the ship's galley where we eat all of our meals.


This is a picture of the ships library where we are able to find a variety of movies and books.


Here is Lisa in her state room!