Pre-cruise Decorating

Welcome to the I09N cruise blog!

So many things will be happening on this cruise and GO-BGC floats are only a small part of that. We’re sending 8 biogeochemical floats to be deployed along the route, concentrating them north into the Bay of Bengal because it is a very interesting region and not many research vessels get there.

Many of our program’s floats are adopted by classrooms around the world, who get to name the floats and follow along on their journey. Many float deployment cruises start off with the fun bonding experience of a float decorating party. I’ve participated in a few myself – we open up the float crates and let anyone and everyone add their artistic skills to the float hull with sharpies. It’s always a fun way to get some creativity flowing and chat with people at the beginning of a cruise. However, this cruise will be a bit different because the floats are already packed away in cardboard boxes and will stay that way through deployment. Since I work at Scripps Institution of Oceanography where the floats were assembled and tested, I visited the lab before the floats were boxed up to add the adopted names and school information. I’m not very artistic so they’re not nearly as intricate or beautiful as some other adopted floats, but at least this way they’re officially named before beginning their long mission in the ocean depths.

I’ll also be meeting the ship in Fremantle to get all the floats loaded up and ready for the cruise. Stay tuned for more once all the gear and people make it to the R/V Thomas G. Thompson next month!

~Melissa Miller, program manager for GO-BGC