#2 THE CREW

The Crew

R/V Knorr

6/27/01

21:55 ship time (GMT)

29'14"N

25'11"W

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

- John Masefield

I'm rocketing along almost due west.  

It may be better described as rocking along, as the ship lumbers and rolls from one shoulder to the other as we blast along at 12 knots.  

This structure is approximately a city block long, 3 small bedrooms wide and 5 stories high.  I’m constantly lost in the maze of corridors, ladders, stairways and secret passageways.  I'm beginning to feel like Harry Potter.

The strangest thing is that though there are 22 crew aboard, one hardly ever sees them.  The mystery people show up to start chipping rust early in the morning.  Then they

disappear till lunch and half of the crew shows up to eat.  The others are evidently on station down in the loud belly of the beast or at the helm or sleeping.  This, the 3rd day brings yet another crew member that I’ve never seen before.  Where are they hiding?  

Captain Silva- mid 50s, beard, no nonsense, two gold loops in left earlobe, slight Boston accent.  Been around the world more than once and looks like he can make it several more times. Known as the master.

Pete- bosun mate.  The crustiest old coot you can imagine.   5'11" wiry red hair all

over his body, beard climbs his face to just below his eyes.  Hits shore and starts drinking, doesn't stop till he staggers back to the boat.  Next morning (three hours later), face red as a tomato, he's up at the crack of dawn, stripped to his waist, directing rigging cranes and moving gear on deck.  He would tear his arm off to do you a favor and never expect a thank you.    Could be 40 or could be 75, can't tell...

Today we "got wet".  We passed the 200 mile limit from Spanish lands, (the

Canaries are owned by Spain and are to Spain, much like Hawaii is to mainland USA) and because we didn't want to hassle for permission to operate in their waters, we waited till we were outside before stopping.  

 

The ship stops, we lower nets and tow for 10 minutes.  Raise it up and low and behold this, "PERFECTLY" clear dark, dark, clean clear blue of water gave up a bucket of squiggling zooplankton and, and clumps of phytoplankton.  Boy did we get excited.  there were even Trisomethingorother, the nitrogen

fixing algae thingamugabobs that we're spending $5 million to study.  

The CTD is one of the primary oceanographic instruments.  CTD stands for conductivity, temperature, and depth, and refers to a package of electronic instruments that measure these properties.  Here is a link to a nice video about the CTD.  We lowered the CTD to 1000 meters, where the pressure would crush your adult body to the size of your 6 year old frame.  A favorite trick of the scientificos is to attach a Styrofoam object, like the mannequin heads that beauty parlors display their wigs on and when it returns to the surface, it is a perfect shape of the original but the size of an apple.  Tomorrow we tear the

ship up looking for Styrofoam objects.  The CTD has 24 tubes which can be closed independently from signals from our lab.  2 chambers are closed at different levels, such as 1000, 750, 500, 200, 100, 50, 20, surface and more at the Fluorescents max, (the level of highest chloroform concentration)  the chloroform concentration is highest at the zone near the nutrient rich deep and the light accessible shallow surface area.  Since all the life captures the nutrients near the surface and it's stored in the biomass itself, very little nutrients are left near the surface.  

This pic was taken on a day with absolutely no wind, perfectly glass smooth water out in the mid Atlantic.  I never imagined in my wildest dreams that the ocean could be so flat and clear.  The CDT is actually about 10' underwater and if you look close, you can see the slight water disturbance about 6" below the cable turnbuckle. 

Once the CTD is returned to the deck, it is swarmed by the mobs of scientist, grabbing their samples, spiking their bottles with various chemicals, and running back to their labs to measure, test, freeze, and process.  All data is logged into a central server that will dump to a land based system where all scientists all over the world can access.   We will stop once / day to perform this same sampling on our way to our major station in the mid-Atlantic.  We are currently scheduled to arrive at our 1st major station on July 2 to spend 6 solid days sampling, and retrieving & redeploying a device waiting for us on the bottom of the ocean. 

Main Lab

One thing i never imagined was how intensive the work is.  These young pups, have been up till midnight and into the morning setting up their labs, music blaring, preparing the sampling equipment for the next day's activities. When we reach the major station, we may be working around the clock to capture all the data we can.

Today's intro was fun in the sun and a blast, but I'm wondering what it will be like to be doing this at 3am.

Well, got to go to deploy the net for a tow in the dark.  At 11:30pm, the critters come up to the surface.

PS. I'm sending this to a few folks who's email I remember.  Please feel free to share it with whoever, and if they desire to be copied direct, have them email me their address.  

KA, please send Richard and Sara's

From the sunny Atlantic

Yer pal, sailor/scientist david

Sometimes deploying the equipment does not go as planned.  Timing is everything.  Oh and quick feet.