ok, so have slept about an hour in the last day, so why am I writing this....? someone better be reading..... :)

saw some awesome birds around the ship, little white ones darting around in the ships lights last night (this morning?!?), and albatros follow us thinking we are a fishing boat, then leave when they figure out we aren't dumping them any fish, although the other night the waters were full of krill, and getting sucked up into the incubators, incubators were cleaned out and the krill dumped out the back of the ship, but no birds around at that time. Probably the coolest birds are these small black, yellow, and green birds with black slits for eyes, wicked, and wicked!

boat is rocking pretty good, apparently the largest swell they have had out here on the cruise, don't mind it much, except when trying to acidify samples!

Tues

In the fog. So fog horns every minute, like seriously every minute (by law).

Saw the craziest thing today, well OK, maybe not the craziest, but surprising: A hummingbird, out at sea(!), zipping around the ship. Also watched some albatros for a while, amazing to watch them fold up their large wings, they must fold in like three or four places, and suddenly these huge wings are tucked up onto their back.

The sea was really awesome for a while today, appearing calm (nearly full reflection, like a lake), and yet undulating with a long slow swell; hypontic to watch. Watching the fog roll in was also interesting, as the sun set, it completely altered the look of that water, making the ocean appear almost as puffy clouds, but the color of pea soup. (hmmm....depending on who is reading this, I just spelled "color" wrong....)

Microprofiler crew is doing casts until 3:00am, then we steam for 12 hours, we may be sampling late tomorrow (Wed) night / early Thurs morning, we'll see, but enjoying time now to read a little bit!

09Aug2010

SUN!!! Apparently they have not had much of this over the last couple of weeks. Was hanging out up on Monkey's Island (near the top of the ship) to enjoy the sun. Saw a couple of whales and porpoises playing in the wake around the ship.

The expanse of the ocean all around you is humbling, both makes you think you are so small, but also really builds a sense of community on the ship, you realize that the people and supplies on the ship is really all you have out here. Hard to imagine going out blindly into the ocean as early explorers did, we have satellite, internet, phone, helipad, so many safety measures in place, they were just heading out in a wooden ship with sails, a compass, and a map that was probably incorrect. Crazy!

Anyway, first trace metal sampling went smoothly, they really have a great system in place for sampling, lables, etc, makes it real easy.

Awesome shicken salad croissant lunch and chickpea stew dinner

One station tomorrow, then 12 hours of steaming

internet is available only sporadically and is slow, so here are some posts from the last couple of days

08Aug2010

Swaying of the ship is like being rocked to sleep…..which I will probably be doing soon, as we have a station at 4:30 tomorrow morning. Ship life here seems great, everyone is very welcoming and everyone seems to just go about doing their job and then, more importantly, you actually see people NOT working (ie. people have regular schedules and have time off!).

Had a great day travelling across the island and spending the evening in Ucluelet with Chris and Kevin from Uvic, they are down a man and so have been helping them out some today with their microprofiler (looks like an underwater palmtree!, not sure if I will be able to upload pics, may have to wait for land). Will start our sampling tomorrow. Elena, Christina, and Ian did quite a transformation on our trace metal sampling container, plastic sheeting makes it look like a real clean lab!

Chicken Kiev lunch and steak dinner, not bad! and somehow three (?!?!?) deserts, mocha pie, lemon bar, and baked apple with butterscotch vanilla ice cream (and ahhh, oh yeah, like three cookies….)

Looking forward to a good sleep and an early morning!

Ok, so not on ship yet, but in Ucluelet! Rolling in the sweet UVic late 80s/early 90s Chevy Astro minivan with dark blue pseudo-shag carpeting going up the doors! Hope to be on ship tomorrow, but it has been involved in search and rescue operations for a couple of days, so we are still technically on standby.

Beautiful drive across the island and a 'shady' (no, actually AWESOME) lunch at the Shady Rest restaurant/pub/liquor store in Qualicum. Now going to go explore Ucluelet!

(From ~10:30am):

A little rain on the ferry, but good to see people still out enjoying the view, I will go join them shortly (should probably keep laptop inside and dry). So my security came through Ottawa and am now heading from Vancouver to Uculet over on the west side of the Island to meet up with the Tully for the last third of the Ianson Cruise, then stay on for the Line P cruise, returning Sep 3. Just leaving Horseshoe Bay now in transit to Departure Bay in Nanaimo, guys from UVic are going to pick me up and then we are headed across the Island to Uculet, stopping in Port Alberni for lunch.

Clouds are just handing over the coast, pretty awesome view (Come on you people all around me: stop eating your $12 eggs and toast, look up from your newspaper and enjoy this view! Ok yeah, so I am on a laptop, but have been staring off for like five minutes between each sentence).

Anyway, in terms of the work, we should have two transects left on the cruise from which we are performing trace metal sampling, one transect along the Juan de Fuca and one off the coast of Washington. Other groups will be making stops for microprofiling work and deploying and recovering a couple of floats.

So apparently there is not wireless internet on this ferry (not that there is anything wrong with this, wow, we have become so spoiled….), so anyway, will try to actually get this up soon

Next post from ship!?!?

Bag has been packed, but........my security has not cleared in Ottawa, so on standby tomorrow morning. Positions have been cut in Ottawa and clearances are being held up, there are two of us on the hook for the cruise tomorrow. For now, nothing to do but stay positive and hope for some last minute magic tomorrow. Good thing is Ottawa is three hours ahead, so there is an extra three hours for something to happen before boarding.

So in the spirit of staying positive, a little about what we will be doing. The first cruise is along the BC coast, with one station in Alaskan waters and one in Washington waters. We will be collecting water from the stations marked with the blue circles, about 48. At each station we will be sampling at up to 12 depths.

Sampling happens with this rosette, each of the 12 bottles can be closed from deck. We are pretty spoiled, we can monitor temperature, salinity, and oxygen in real time on deck and then select sample depths, thanks technology!

After the rosette comes up we filter the water, which is then either analyzed on board, or stored for later. Our group tests for trace metals in the sea water. Some metals are important for microscopic phytoplankton that use the sun's energy to form the base of the food web, these metals include iron, zinc, cadmium, to name a few. Other trace metals can be used as indicators of how these biologically important trace metals get to the ocean, either through the air or from the sediments along shallow coastal areas, these metals include aluminum, gallium, and manganese.

Ok, well, thinking good thoughts for tomorrow. Will give info on next cruise as it approaches.