Day 31 Thursday October 27, 2011

The seas are settling down again after yesterday's trek through a storm system that left a lot of people a little green around the edges.  We were met with a nice sunny day and a few surprise critter visitors, including a sea turtle.

We have started moving north now, as well, along our station track which means Rio is not too far away.  Everyone is getting antsy to see land but work is still going strong.  We have about 14 more stations to go and then a transit to port.

Another group we have on board is Nutrients.  This group looks at the levels of life sustaining nutrients that can be found in the water column.  These are necessary building blocks that are the very start of the aquatic food chain.  These measurements help biologists and chemists measure any shifts of hypoxic regions, as well as expansions and contractions of barren regions in the oceans.  Another purpose for these samples is to measure the Phosphate levels to accompany DIC and DOC processing.  Since as mentioned before there is a known natural ration of Carbon to other elements, including Phospate, this sampling acts as a diagnostic and calibration for Carbon modeling.

Thanks for reading.
-Elizabeth

Our current position is:
28  57.732'S    and   43 15.189'W

Below are a few photos of: a) The sunrise this morning and b) Nutrient's sampling area

Day 29 Tuesday October 25, 2011 10:56 GMT

Both scientists and crew are now getting excited about how close we are to Rio now.  There is a palpable change in the air, a mix of anxious, impatient excitement. 

Work is still going well and fast, in fact we have slowed down a little to give the samplers some time to process the water they have collected before running to take more and becoming backlogged. 

Yet more whales have been sighted and remains quite an amazing spectacle for those who can make it out of labs, or bed to see it.

Another group of scientists on board are our pH and Alkalinity team.

Way back when in our middle/high school/college chemistry classes we learned about the pH scale.  A scale ranging from 0-14 that designates the acidity (or lack thereof) level in a given substance, where 0 was extremely acidic, 14 was an extremely strong base and 7 was fairly neutral.

The pH is measured in the oceans to better study the Ocean Acidification (OA) mentioned in the previous post.  Measuring pH as well as Alkalinity gives two out of four parameters (the other two are DIC and partial CO2) and allows for the calculation of the missing parameters.  The samples collected are analyzed and a specific pH given to each one.  These sample values are then compared to ones taken on previous CLIVAR cruises along the A-10 transect line.  The differences in pH over the years of data gathered give an indication of the change in acidity of the ocean.

Alkalinity is used in much the same way, an indicator in ocean acidity, but is processed differently.  The water samples collected are transferred into closed processing system that prevents the intrusion of air or other particulates into the sample.  Hydrochloric acid is then slowly added until it reaches the same concentration as carbonic acid (Carbon derived acid responsible for ocean acidification and used in studying the carbon cycle).  The amount of acid that needs to be added to the seawater to get this concentration is an important measurement.  The less acid needed, the higher in acidity the sea water is to begin with.

Thanks for reading.
-Elizabeth

We are currently on track to Station 100.  Our position is:
30 0.001'S   and    39 53.74'W

Below are some photos of: a) The pH crew (Valentina and Tammy) -photo by Valentina, b) The Alkalinity crew (Carmen and Jen) -photo by Valentina, c) The view from the bridge

Day 28 Monday October 24, 2011 01:37 GMT

Things are going smoothly.  The winch is working beautifully, the seas are calmer and the countdown until dry land is at 1 week now.  We have just moved through another time zone, we are now at 2 hours ahead of EST and currently on Brasil time.

There have been more whale sightings recently, especially as we moved to the western side of the Rio Grande Rise (located right around 35 deg W).  This rise is similar to the Walvis Ridge, that we passed early on into the cruise, in that it is an aseismic ridge.  An aseismic ridge is a long, linear, mountain chain that is formed by volcanic activity.  An interesting factoid of these ridges is that earthquakes do not occur in these regions.

Continuing with the discussion of the scientific groups sampling we come now to DIC and DOC.

DIC (dissolved inorganic carbon) references the total sum of inorganic carbons such as CO2, carbonic acid, bicarbonate anion, and carbonates.  DIC is linked to the measurements being done to determine the ocean acidification rate.  Ocean Acidification, caused by the absorption of DICs from the atmosphere, contributes to the breakdown of calcium carbonates, a necessary building block for organisms such as coral and shellfish.  For more information on Ocean Acidification see NOAA's site:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F
Measurements taken in the ocean are a good way to measure the amount of DIC that is in the atmosphere.  It is hypothesized that one quarter of the DIC in the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans.

DOC (dissolved organic carbon) is generally derived from the decomposition of organic materials, i.e., plants and animals.  DOC plays an important role in the carbon cycle found in oceans through something called the microbial loop.  This loop is simply a cyclical food chain where DOC is incorporated into a bacterial biomass and then carried through the chain until it returns eventually as DOC.
There is an indication that when high concentrations are found in areas that are typically low in DOC amounts, such as the deep oceans, it is caused by human influence.


Thanks for reading.
-Elizabeth

Our current position is on Station 94 at:
30 0.02 S    and   38 01.00 W


Below are several photos of: a) Location of Rio Grande Rise (located around the 35 W line) and b) Driving along the coast in Cape Town

Day 24 Thursday October 20, 2011 13:43 GMT

Another bumpy day weather-wise here aboard the Brown.  Over the past few days we have hit some high seas and winds.  Nothing too big though, we were still able to deploy and recover the rosette without too much trouble.  We are expecting a rockier ride, though, as we get closer to Brazil.

We have finally hit that countdown point where there are now less than two weeks before we are in Rio.  We just completed Station 76 out of 116 (8 stations needed to be cut due to the delays we incurred from winch issues) and are well on our way to Station 77.  After our deep cast at Station 69 the winch has been much better and casts have gotten faster.  Keeping our fingers crossed that this remains the case.

On that deep cast we sent some more cups down and they look great.  There were only one or two casualties out of the 60 or so that were sent.

Even with the higher seas, a humpback whale was spotted yesterday, though not many got to see it this time.

That's all for now.  Thanks for looking through.
- Elizabeth

We are currently located at:
30 0.001'S   and   29 35.67'W

Below are a couple photos of: a) More sunrise and b) The cups ready to be strapped to the rosette

Day 21 Monday October 17, 2011 13:27 GMT

What started out as a warm, calm day has turned into a fairly gray, cool, wet day.  It doesn't seem to be dampening anyone's spirits though. 

Today was a fairly busy day with multiple long casts and more samples being taken now that we are hitting stations where there is a possibility of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) collection. 

NADW is a deep circulation water mass that forms mainly in the Labrador Sea (located between Canada and Greenland).  It is formed of high salinity, dense water that can be tracked as it makes it way from Greenland down the eastern coast of the Americas at depths varying between 2km - 4km (~1 - 2.5 miles) and then east across the South Atlantic towards the tip of South Africa where it mixes with the extremely fresh, cold waters of Antarctica.  The NADW is part of the Atlantic 'conveyor belt' that gets news coverage once in awhile.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.
-Elizabeth

Our current position is:
29 59.99' S   and   23 6.05' W

Below are a few photos of: a) The sunrise this morning and b) A global look at ocean circulation including the NADW - image from: http://forces.si.edu/arctic/02_02_04.html

Day 20 Sunday October 16, 2011 12:41 GMT

There was another amazing sunrise this morning, sadly it did not last too long.
We will be going through another time change later this evening.  Tomorrow we will be 3 hours ahead of EST.

There is progress being made aboard.  The forward winch which we are now using, though slower than we would like, is keeping pace with the new schedule we have in place.  There have been many successful casts made over the last few days and lessening stress levels.

This new system could not have been possible without the enormous amount of hard work being put into it by the crew of the Brown.  There is an increased workload on everyone, including but not limited to the winch operators and second hands to make sure the line spools as well as it can, the survey crew, and all of the engineers.  A big thanks to everyone already for the amount of work they are putting into making this a successful cruise.

Continuing again with a discussion upon the importance of this CLIVAR CO2 Repeat Hydrography cruise, the next group to talk about is Helium and Tritium sampling.  The mention of Helium usually sends people's thoughts running the funny high pitched voices produced from inhaling the gas inside of super market bought balloons. 

In this case Helium takes on a much more serious role.  Helium and Tritium are both tracers much like the CFCs discussed earlier.  They are used to 'age the water'.  Samples taken for Helium are prepared for processing shipboard.  The gas is actually extracted from the water and stored to be sent through a mass spectrometer.  The spectrometer counts the atoms of Helium at each depth.  These amounts are then compared to ratios known for decay rates and the age of the water at those depths can then be determined. 

Why do you need to know the age of water?  Since most of these tracers are introduced at surface level and are consequently mixed down over time to deeper depths, we can determine how long it took the water to sink based upon the age of the tracers in the water.

Tritium is sampled for as well, but those samples are collected and sent back to a lab where they are then prepared and processed.


Thanks for looking through.
-Elizabeth

Our current location is:
29  59.99' S    and    20  46.76'W

*If you want more up to date information on where we are out here in the big, blue South Atlantic visit NOAA's shiptracker:
http://shiptracker.noaa.gov/ship.aspx?ship_code=RBSCSACQ&timeframe=cc&mapservi 


Below are some photos of: a) The sunrise this morning, b) The Helium lab with Anthony Dachille, c) Helium sampling - Photo by Co-Chief Alison and d) CFC sampling - Photo by Co-Chief Alison

Day 16 Wednesday October 12, 2011 00:38 GMT

We've had quite a few days.  Things are not looking so good right now.  We've had even more winch problems which has slowed us down considerably.

The debate now is which stations will need to be cut in order to maintain our time table of getting into Rio, and to maintain the integrity of the cruise.  There comes a point when so many stations must be cut that the data gathered isn't representative of the overall line that is being measured and the option is to end the cruise.
We are all hopeful that this does not happen and that we can continue on even if it means with fewer stations to sample.

The weather has been holding fairly well.  It is not perfect and sunny anymore but at least we are not combating storms as well.

Morale on the ship is ok.  Many of the scientists are just bearing with the setbacks and hoping for the best.


Thats all for now,
-Elizabeth

Our current position is:
30 0.00'  S    and    11 6.70'  W

Day 13 Sunday October 9, 2011 13:13 GMT

Today was a bit rougher weather-wise than we have had in previous days.  We had our first storm cross over us. 

Work is still going well, though we have slowed down due to continuing winch problems.  Hopefully our capable mechanics will get us up and running again without too much delay.

There was an important point I had forgotten to include in the last post about the importance of O2 sampling.  There is a certain ratio of Carbon to other essential chemicals such as Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Oxygen that occurs naturally.  By taking measurements of O2, and nutrients (will be discussed in a future post) as well as other chemicals, a total Carbon budget can be estimated.  This Carbon budget can then be subtracted from the level of Carbon sampled to see how much excess CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans.

 Each day is progressing rapidly and even with the delays there is more than enough work to go around.  We are on Station 46 at this point, only 78 more to go.

If you want to leave a comment or question feel free by clicking on the blue comments link found below this post.  It will open a new screen for you to write what's on your mind.

Thanks for reading!
-Elizabeth

Our current location is:
29 59.96' S   and   5 57.51' W

Below are a couple pictures of: a) Sunrise pre-storm, b) Choppy water and blue skies after the storm

Day 11 Friday October 7, 2011 11:29 GMT

What started out as a grayish, slightly rocky day has turned into yet another sunny, pretty day. 

The work on board has been going well.  We had enough time yesterday to do an independent cast for a student sampling for black carbon, which requires an enormous amount of water, as well as having enough time for the crew to do dive checks of the ship.  The pH group has also gotten their equipment back online (fingers crossed it stays that way for them) after several days of uncertainty.

Yesterday a brief description was given of one of the working science groups on board.  Continuing on that trend, our second set of sampling is Oxygen.  The O2 group samples for several reasons on this cruise.  The CTD that we deploy has O2 sensors on it (primary and secondary), these measure the O2 levels using a membrane that given time and circumstance can 'gum up' and go off calibration.  To prevent inaccurate data from being given to the scientists using the data collected on this cruise, sampled O2 is used like a finger print to check the accuracy of the CTD O2 sensor.  Another purpose for O2 sampling is that oxygen is another type of water mass tracer much like salinity and temperature.  Unique ocean processes and features can be identified and tracked using water mass tracers.  The other reason for this gathering of data is for biological research.  Hypoxic (little to no usable oxygen) regions are of great interest to biologists studying the diversity in the world's oceans.

We will also be releasing GDP drifter number 5 and Argo float number 4 today.

Hope you enjoyed reading.
-Elizabeth

Our current location here at Station 38 is:
30 0.01 S   and  3 21.51 W

Below are several photos of: a)Bringing the CTD back on board after a long cast, b) Another view of that amazing sunrise, c) The CTD at 10 metres under the surface from above.

Day 10 Thursday October 6, 2011 11:47 GMT

Today has been another beautiful day on the water.  The ocean is truly like glass, and if not for the chilly temperatures (around 54 degrees F) would be amazing to jump into.  The sunrise this morning was the most spectacular that I think I have ever seen.

We are progressing well, we are at Station 35 right now.  Only 89 more stations before Rio!

There are 13 different groups sampling from the Niskin bottles (big grey tubes) attached to the rosette.  Each group is sampling for particular elements in order to determine variability in and structure of the oceans.

The first of these groups (not in particular order) is the CFC (Chlorofluorocarbon) group.  The measurements of CFCs and other 'tracers' (measurable and traceable chemicals in the ocean) such as sulfur hexafluoride help to document several ocean processes.  Through cruises like this one where deep casts are made and water samples are collected at different depths we get an idea of the invasion of CFCs into the deep waters of the ocean.  This is important because it gives us an idea of a time frame of  uptake in the oceans for uptake for other gases such as CO2 (carbon dioxide).  It also allows us to form a better picture of ocean circulation, by tracking the elements we track the flows.
For more information with better explanations, visit the PMEL CFC Tracer Program website at :http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/cfc/review/index.html.

Thanks for reading!
-Elizabeth

If you are tracking our progress we are now on the western side of the Prime Meridian at:
29  59.99 S   and    1 37.98 W

Below are some photos of: a) Sunrise this morning beginning, b) Sunrise this morning ending, c) Part of the CFC lab

Day 9 Wednesday October 5, 2011 02:14 GMT

The last day has been quite busy for us aboard the Brown.  We are just about finished with our stations across the Walvis Ridge, a unique topographical feature in the South Atlantic.  Due to its importance our stations were much closer together, and due to a ridge actually being an underwater range of mountains, they were much more shallow than normal.  This led to a rather large amount of work that needed to be done in a short amount of time.  There were times when as soon as sampling ended the rosette was going back into the water.

Now that things are starting to return back to our normal pace, the different science groups will have a little more time to process and prepare for the next station.

We also deployed GDP drifter number 3 and Argo float number 2.  Pictures were taken of these deployments so you can see how large the Argo floats are.

Since the sun isn't yet up for today, there isn't much of a weather report.  Yesterday was gray and overcast in the morning but the sun eventually made its way out.

Our progress is going well, we are almost at the Prime Meridian! 

Comments are now activated for the blog, so if you have any questions, scientific or otherwise, or any words of wisdom feel free to post. 

Thanks for reading!
-Elizabeth

If you are tracking our progress we are now at:
29 35.98 S   and   1 41.52 E

Below are some photos of:  a)Deploying a drifter, b) Preparing to deploy an Argo float, c) A cloudy sunrise, d) A nice picture of sunset in Cape Town

Day 7 Monday October 3, 2011 12:43 GMT

Another beautiful, sunny, blue, calm day out on the water.  This is the third day that whales have been spotted from the ship as well.  The novelty of it hasn't worn off and I hope that it doesn't.

There has been a cold that's making its way around the ship, so some of us are feeling a bit under this beautiful weather.  That hasn't held us back from making progress on our voyage.  We released another GDP drifter and also released our first Argo float.

Argo is a broad-scale, global array of profiling floats that measure temperature and salinity.  These floats are battery powered and are made to drift around the oceans at specified depths.  Usually every 10 days they pop up to the surface to take more measurements and relay their data and position to satellites.
For more information about the Argo program and the floats go to:
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/About_Argo.html

We also had our first time change of the cruise, we are now 5 hours ahead of EST instead of 6!  Plus our first set of cups were fantastic.  We will be sending down several bags more through this cruise and hopefully will have quite a collection to bring home with us.

Thanks for reading!
-Elizabeth

If you are tracking our progress we are now located at:
29 44.99'S  and  4 25.49'E

Below are some photos of; a)our beautiful, calm seas, b) An Argo float being deployed, c) The cycle of an Argo float and d) Leaving Cape Town, the first go-around.

Day 6 Sunday October 2, 2011 11:44 GMT

Things have been running fairly smoothly over the last few days.  We were able to get slightly ahead of schedule even after some delays due to winch issues.  The weather has been beautiful.  Clear blue skies and calm seas.  We are hoping that they stay with us for the duration.

Hoping to add to our burgeoning good luck, over the last two days whales have been sighted from the ship fairly close.  If nothing else it has definitely lifted the spirits of those who can go take a look.

Yesterday we also deployed our first drifter (a buoy that measures temperature and other properties), and plan to deploy several more throughout the cruise.  These drifters are part of the Global Drifter Program (GDP) through AOML NOAA.  To learn more about this cool program check out the extremely informative website : http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dac/gdp_drifter.php .

Some of us are in the process of decorating styrofoam cups that will eventually be sent down with the rosette.  The immense pressure that will be exerted will shrink the cups.  So when the package comes back to the surface we will have mini cups.

Below are some photos of the whales, a GDP drifter, and an example of the cups.

Thanks for reading!
-Elizabeth

If you are tracking our cruise's progress we are currently at:
29  45.00' S   and   6  9.00' E