#18 WHY 4AM?

"There is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."
- Spoken by Ratty to Mole in Wind in the Willows a children's book by Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932)

R/V Knorr

July 15, 2001

10'N

45"W

06:30 

So why 4am I hear you asking. Good question. We have an experiment studying the productivity of the ocean waters in these specific locals. We have to gather water to set up our experiment to place the samples in the water before the sun comes up. So we do a CTD cast at 4am, which comes back on board at ~5am, collect the water from different depths, bottle it in various sample bottles, spike it with the testing nutrients, and nitrogen 15 isotope, be ready to attach these bottles to a long line off the stern at 6am and reel the line out off an enormous diesel winch. So now the 200 feet of line with a weight at the bottom and a float at the top is drifting about the sea with 80 sample bottles attached to it at various depths awaiting the sun to start their photosynthesis processes.  We will retrieve this line in the evening. This is similar to the standard experiments we run on deck in plastic tubs with various shades of film to replicate different light  levels, but putting it in the ocean offers more exact conditions.  We can correlate these results with those we see today in our deck tanks and determine how close we are simulating the real world conditions and thus adjust all our data with a correction factor.   

Now that we've lost both our sediment traps at Dusty 1 and Dusty 2, sometime during the morning, it came to our attention that we've not had a bearing for 30 hours, on our floating sediment trap which we deployed on Tuesday. So we canceled a bunch of the science ops, and went in search for the missing drifting device. It has a strobe beacon light and a radio transmitter mounted on top of a 6' tall mast with a radar deflector. We reviewed the sightings we had for the 1 1/2 days we tracked it, determined a range of drift rates between .3 and .5 knots and a possible heading range. All these we plotted on a chart and with arcs representing the distance from the last sighting based on the minimal and maximum distance it likely covered, and a range of bearings, with a probable zone to be searched.  We set waypoints in a 2 mile grid with points located on the arcs and began steaming from one way point to the next, systematically covering all the ground we thought it might be located. We picked up the radio signal after the second way point and as we shifted west to the next waypoint, it got stronger.  We heading back south for the next point and the signal became dimmer about 1.5 miles later.  Thus we knew that the  drifting trap was north. Prior to the start of the search, Mike and I had laid out this whole search and rescue grid on the chart in the bridge.  

During the search, we realized that the best vantage point was from the tallest point on the ship, so we once again, crawled up to the crow's nest with binoculars, and scanned the horizon while the nest swung in a large arch with the roll of the ship.  It was so great up there! It was like reenactment of WWII scenes, complete with a crank intercom between the bridge and the crow's nest.  Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that this is not just some fantasy playhouse created for my sabbatical, but there are times that I have a hard time believing it! Prior to catching the signal, Bridget was near tears, because she had borrowed the lost $15k piece of equipment from her Phd program advisor and  was envisioning her career sinking here in the Atlantic.  As you can imagine, we were able to systematically track it down, though no benefit from the two yahoos reenacting submarine chase movies up in the crow's nest. The radar picked up a signal long, long before we could see it visually.  

So now the big news... Just after dinner, the Captain pulls the chief Scientist aside and has a confidential conversation with him, where he regretfully informs him that we have to return to Barbados due to yet another medical emergency.  As I watched the story trickle through the group, I could see the disbelief, the suspicion of a joke, the disbelief again, and then a wide eyed sense of shock and regret, shortly followed by a big shit eating grin of relief from all the science and possible SHORE LEAVE!!!!!

Guess what the medical emergency is....

More  tomorrow.....