Microplastics in the South West Pacific and Southern Ocean

Alexander Sidelev

(Microplastics, N2O and tritium sampler)

Microplastics pollution is one of the most misunderstood ocean phenomena in the modern world. While hearing the word, microplastic, most people assume that it is simply visible bits of trash floating in the ocean. While to a certain degree such statement is true, the plastics that are the focus of our research require a microscope to be viewed. Such small pieces of plastic also have a peculiar water column distribution. Most of the polymers used in production of plastics are less dense than water, allowing for a greater viscosity of microplastics though the vertical water column and a significant spread across the surface layer. Such distribution creates a problem magnitudes greater than simply having trash in the ocean waters. These small pieces of plastic harm the trophic structure of plankton and pose a great threat to all marine life. Our goal is to collect a substantial amount of empirical data to improve computer models of microplastic presence. The greatest source of error in any numerical model is incorrect assumptions due to a lack of accurate empirical data. The samples collected will provide a basis for which a model of the region could be built. A better model will provide a greater understanding of microplastic pollution and an easier way to convey the issue to the general public. Without direct observations of microplastics like the ones we collected here, the world will be reluctant to do anything about the problem. By collecting samples and presenting the data we hope to improve outreach and better our general understanding of the dangers plastics pose to the ocean environment. 

 (sometimes we catch krill in addition to microplastics)

(Microplastic net)

 (we deploy over the side while the boat is on station. The current pulls water through the net and we collect anything that is to large to pass through our fine mesh net)

Happy New Years!

Bethany Kolody


Happy New Years from the Ron Brown!  Or as we like to call it here, “Andrew day,” in celebration of the New Year’s Eve birthdays of everyone onboard named Andrew.  (Pictured below: Andrew Babbin and Andrew Collins hard at work with the CTD Rosette). 

To celebrate, the crew cooked up an amazing New Year’s Eve Ball complete with a photo booth, non-alcoholic fizzy toasts, and roaring dance jams.  I can’t help but admire the dedication that must have gone into acquiring 2017-themed photo booth props and confetti-filled party poppers far enough in advance to have them in the middle of nowhere on the ocean on New Year’s Eve.

Several guests came dressed to the nines.  Our hostess, Lydia, sported a smashing party tuxedo, and House came in full pirate attire. 

We were even visited by the mystical lobster-horse!  A creature as majestic as the unicorn, with the head of a horse, the claws of a lobster, and the heart of a hard-core partier.

Ultimately, though, we were all put to shame by the Capitan, who looked downright regal in his navy formalwear.

At midnight, there was even a ball drop! (The ball looked suspiciously like a fishing buoy cleverly disguised with shiny aluminum foil).  My idea of decorating the CTD and dropping it into the ocean at midnight was firmly vetoed by both scientists and crew, but the buoy-drop was satisfying nonetheless...

All told, I can say with certainty that I will never again have a New Year’s Eve like this one.  Thanks to all who made it unique, and especially to the crew members who poured their love and energy into making our little ship seem that much closer to home!

 (Remy, Bonnie, Lydia and Alexandra)

 

(Bythany and Javiera)

 Conrad, Alexandra, and Mariana)

(Gordy)

 (Lydia and Mark)

 (Cathy and Alexandra)

 (Alexandra and Remy)

 (Brian, Lydia, Mark, House, Josh, Dan, Alex, CO Kamphaus)

Anatomy of a CTD Cast

Paige Logan

CTD watch stander, Salinity analysts, Argo float deployment specialist

The primary mission of this cruise is to take CTD casts every 0.5° latitude (~55km) along the 103°W meridian from Baja California to Antarctica. At our current speed, this works out to about 4 casts per 24 hours. Since they are so important to the success of this cruise, and now we have done so many on leg 2, we thought it was time for a blog post detailing how they work.

First, let's go over what exactly makes up a CTD.

A CTD is a set of sensors that we lower down to the seafloor in order to measure conductivity, temperature, and depth. Conductivity is used to estimate the seawater’s salinity, which is important for examining a number of processes in the ocean. However, the instrument package we lower at each station contains much more than just a CTD (though people on the ship often mistakenly/lazily refer to the whole package, known as the rosette, as a CTD). The CTD itself sits in the middle of a large metal frame, connected to a 6,000+ meter long wire that allows two-way communication between the ship and the package. It samples continuously at 24 Hz (24 samples per second) both on the way down to the seafloor and the way back up to the surface, allowing us to monitor the water column structure throughout the entire cast. Around the outside of the frame sit 24 Niskin bottles, which are cocked open at both the top and the bottom by lanyards connected to a carousel of latches in the middle of the frame. As we bring the package back up to the surface, we pause at a number of predetermined depths and tell individual bottles to close their caps (via an electrical signal down the wire to the carousel) to capture 11 liters of seawater at that depth for analysis back on the boat. In addition to the CTD, there are a number of other important sensors in the center of the package that, like the CTD, sample continuously on both the downcast (to the seafloor!) and the upcast (back to the surface!). There are two oxygen sensors (a primary and a secondary), an altimeter (to tell us how close we are to the seafloor), an ADCP (acoustic Doppler current profiler, to measure velocity), Chipods (high resolution temperature probes, to examine small-scale ocean mixing), a transmissometer (to measure how far light can penetrate into the water), a backscatter (to estimate the amount of particular organic matter), and a fluorometer (to estimate chlorophyll concentrations). As you can probably tell, we try to put as many sensors as possible on the rosette in order to get the most bang for our buck from each cast.

So, how does one of these casts work exactly? 

The work begins 30 minutes before we reach the station. In order to be as efficient as possible with our ship time, we try to do all the prepping of the rosette while we're cruising between stations. First, we empty the Niskin bottles of any remaining water from the previous cast (a task best done with boots and waterproof pants on). Next, we connect the lanyards to carousel to cock open lids of the bottles. Lastly, we check that our smorgasbord of sensors is operating correctly on deck (e.g., salinity should be zero, temperature should be the air temperature).

Once on station, the CTD watchstander (that’s me during the day, Conrad during the night) starts up the CTD from inside the computer lab. The survey technician and a lucky volunteer then work with the winch operator to lower the instrument package over the side of the ship. The winch operator controls the cable attached to the CTD, paying out more or less cable to allow it to move up and down in the water. The cable is composed of a two-way communication wire surrounded by an incredibly strong metal casing (this casing enables it to hold the weight of the whole instrument package, ~ 1700 lbs). Once the instruments are in the water, the CTD watchstander is in charge of examining the data coming in from the sensors to verify that they are all operating as they should be. Once we get within 100 meters of the bottom, the altimeter turns on to tell us the distance between the package and the seafloor. From inside the computer lab, we watch this information very carefully in real-time so we can radio the winch operator to stop the package before it hits the bottom. This is always the most nerve-racking part of the cast since no one wants to be responsible for crashing the rosette into the bottom! Typically we can get the package within 10 meters of the bottom. Quite impressive given that it is connected to a rocking and rolling ship! On the way back up, we stop the package at a number of predetermined depths to collect bottle samples. Since there is typically much more structure in the ocean near the surface than at depth, half of our bottle samples are actually taken in the top 1000 meters (of a typical 3000-5000 meter cast). Once we get the instrument package back on deck, usually 3–4 hours after the start of the cast, the bottle sampling begins! Different scientists on board use the water from the Niskin bottles to examine everything from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to rare earth elements to nitrogen isotopes as we speed on to our next station, but you’ll have to hear about that in a later post! Once everyone is done sampling, we start emptying the bottles for the next cast and run through the whole process all over again!

Here is the rosette in all of its glory! Andrew Collins is pictured collecting samples for dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) analysis.

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.

The 10 Best Things about Working Night Shift

By Alexandra Fine

Even though we always miss bingo nights and haven’t had a fresh dinner in weeks, there are some things that make night shift pretty great:

10)    Wi-Fi all night

It’s faster with fewer people using it and stays on all night… enough said!

9)     No waiting for laundry machines

If you like to throw your laundry in while you’re on shift (which means extra time for sleeping and working out when you’re off), good news – in the wee hours of the night you never have to wait for a washer or dryer to open up or worry about someone moving your clothes if you forget to take them out on time. 

8)     Ice cream for dinner

…or middle-of-the-night snack. Seriously, who hasn’t dreamed of this as a child?

7)     The reflection of the moon on the ocean

One of my personal favorites – it makes a great backdrop behind the CTD while we’re sampling, especially when there’s a ‘Super Moon’ that lights up the whole sky or a bright orange crescent just above the horizon.

6)     Fancy cheese and grape juice parties

Thanks to Laura and Co-chief Annie, Leg 1 was blessed with a wide selection of fancy cheeses. What better way to cheer up during the ever-chaotic high-resolution stations (or anytime) than with a late night fancy cheese party?

5)     Visits from Josh

One of the friendliest and most energetic people on the Ronald H. Brown, Senior Survey Tech Josh makes rounds to visit all the scientists every couple hours to give us updates, alert us when there is a sunrise we can’t miss, and keep the good vibes going strong all night long.

4)     We *rarely* miss breakfast

Who doesn’t love fresh eggs however-you-want-them and all the bacon you can dream of? Unless the CTD comes up right at 7 and then it’s shovel, shovel, shovel whatever you can grab until it’s time to start sampling.

3)     Hammock under the stars

On the rare occasion that you finish running all of your samples before the next CTD comes up, or randomly find yourself with time to kill mid-shift, there’s nothing better than kicking up your feet and relaxing in the hammock under a sky full of stars. Trust me!

2)     We never miss a sunrise

…and there have been some spectacular ones! As a photographer, this is one of my favorite things about working night shift. Just yesterday the sky was blended like watercolors, and everyone took a moment to stand on deck and appreciate its beauty 

1)     The people

Though I can’t speak for day shift, no matter how sleep-deprived and delirious we are, the night shift crew always manages to make 3 AM CTD sampling fun. We’ve got great music (thanks Bob!), a fearless leader who samples everything and still makes time to laugh with us (we love you Annie!), and a great group of scientists who keep things lively even when most of the ship is sleeping.

So even though we lose sleep to Monday drills, live off of leftovers and PB&J, and can never remember what day it is, it’s not all bad! 

The Monthly Brown - The trusted name in news

By Josh Gunter - Ship Survey Technician Team

A CTD Frenzy

It has been done. After a very long week, the scientists of GOSHIP P 18 have just finished a grueling set of CTD stations that would make any persons head turn. The miraculous and the remarkable feat that has just been accomplished is truly a sight to behold. Station after station water samples were taken from different depths and different elements such as oxygen were measured all in an effort to better understand our World’s oceans. Even though leg 1 of P18 is not yet complete it is great to see the work the scientists have accomplished so far. When asked what he thought of the work being done the Senior Survey Technician just simply said “Wow”. The entire crew of the Ronald H Brown look forward to what is next and everyone hopes that the rest of leg 1 and all of leg 2 will be just as successful and fulfilling for science.

Annie Bourbonnais (forward), Fen Huang (middle), and
Alexandra (back) collect various water samples from the rosette.

Dock Afloat

The first stop for the Ronald H brown is Easter Island, Chile. This is a great island except for one small little problem there is no port or dock. Since this is the case the ship counts on a water taxi to take people to and from the island. How do you get a boat big enough for 9 up to a ship like the  Brown? The answer is easy you build a floating dock for people to load and unload from. Well Chief Bosun Bruce and the deck department have done that.

You can anticipate that this may be a floating dock in the next week or so.

Just Keep Swimming

Well times have changed and it seems that we have entered the Twilight Zone or something. Is that a pool in December? We have crossed south of the equator which means that we are now back into summer time once again. Acting Bosun Group Leader Mike Lastinger has graciously supplied us with a little back deck entertainment in the form of a swimming pool. Be careful though the deep end can be a bit tricky. When asked about having the opportunity to swim in a swimming pool while on-board most were pretty excited for the chance to bask in the sun while sitting back slurping a nice fresh cold soda. It is a chance to cool off after a long hot day in the South Pacific. This pool even comes with an assortment of pool toys for everyone's entertainment pleasure. There is one downside to this pool and that is there is no tiki bar to go with it. 

Everyone seems to enjoy the pool very much including Lobster Horse who was the first one to take a dip in the cool refreshing oasis of the deck. The Ronald H Brown is a ship that is constantly looking for was to improve morale and welfare on the ship and this is just one of the many things that is done that helps boost peoples moods and ability to do a great and outstanding job. Kudos for Mike Lastinger for making this happen for the scientist and crew. The man really knows how party.

Our aft deck oasis.