Saturday, December 31, 2016

Leg 2 underway!


Conrad Luecke
CTD watch stander

Finally, after one false start and a short delay waiting for a replacement part to fix the ship incinerator, leg two of the GO-SHIP P-18 cruise has begun!

The NOAA ship Ron Brown is now steaming back to our line to pick up where leg 1 left off.  During our two day transit, the crew and scientists are taking time to prepare for our various tasks, get on our respective watch schedules, and reflect on an amazing time during our port call in the tiny but beautiful island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island).  During our stay, we swapped out about half our scientific team (including me) and those of us that are new have been very busy catching up to speed and preparing for our first station.

Over the next 6 weeks we will continue south along 103E to the Antarctic Shelf (~70S), extending the hydrography transect Leg 1 began. Many of us on board are eager to get out of the oligotrophic subtropical gyre and into the Southern Ocean!  The Southern Ocean is an extremely unique and (arguably) the most exciting part of this transect. As we cross the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), we will observe the deep, carbon-rich (read: old) waters of the interior North Pacific upwell towards the surface, driven by wind-forced divergence. This process brings up nutrients and carbon from the deep ocean, driving biological productivity, and also fuels the global meridional overturning circulation. However, the same wind energy that drives this circulation will be beating down on our boat as we travel south so we are all preparing for a rougher ride here on out.

On leg two, I will be one of two CTD watch standers. I am excited to be contributing to our understanding of the ocean and climate and to be at sea for the first time on a research vessel!  The CTD is an instrument that measures conductivity (for salinity), temperature, and depth from the surface to the seafloor (~3000–5000 meters).  In addition to the CTD, our instrument package is busy with many other sensors, as well as Niskin bottles to collect water samples.  The purpose of these instrument casts will be to construct a cross-sectional database of the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the ocean.  Data from this cruise, part of an international, global scale effort will be used by thousands of scientists from all over the world.

For now here is a photo of the R/V Ron Brown anchored off shore of one of Rapa Nui’s famous carved rock Moai.





We started a cruise hashtag! To find more updates (including pictures!) from the cruise, search #P18DataMachine on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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