Since I last wrote, the Thompson crew and I have deployed three more Argo floats, two BGC floats and one core float. That brings us to just past halfway through the journey! Every single deployment so far has, by chance, happened in the small hours of the morning, so my sleep schedule right now is less of a regular pattern and more of a haphazard set of randomly-placed blocks. More than once now I’ve surprised friends on the U.S. east coast by replying to their messages when they assumed I’d be asleep. Despite that, deployments and water sampling continue to go well! I’m getting more and more practiced at the various water sampling procedures. I don’t even need to ask Liz for an extra hand getting the extremely tight rubber bands over the dissolved organic carbon/pH bottles anymore. I’m sure you are all very impressed.
The two BGC floats we’ve deployed over the past couple days have been adopted by school groups. The first one, which was deployed at 2 am on Saturday, was adopted by Canyon Del Oro High School in Arizona, USA. Students at Canyon Del Oro named the float “El Dorado” after their school mascot, a mythical Latin American warrior. The students explained,
“We think the name is suitable because the float is exploring the depths of the ocean and collecting data.”
Sophie and Liz hold the “El Dorado” float before deploying it in the North Pacific; photo credit: Cora Hersh
The “Gators Rise” float on deck before deployment; photo credit: Cora Hersh
The following night, we deployed a BGC float adopted by Goose Creek High School in South Carolina, USA. They named this float “Gators Rise” after their school motto,
“Goose Creek Gators will rise to the next level.”
A few other updates:
Because we crossed the International Date Line, we skipped Monday entirely! On Sunday night we were instructed to set our clocks to Tuesday. It’s taken a couple of days but I think I’ve almost wrapped my mind around it.
I’ve been luxuriously enjoying a little reading time on the bow of the ship every evening once the sun gets low. Sunset over the water is pretty spectacular, and I feel extremely lucky to be able to soak in the bright orange and pink colors, the variety of shapes and textures of the clouds, and the sight of rain over the ocean in the distance. Sometimes a vertical slice of rainbow will appear under one of the soft gray clouds.
One of the beautiful horizon views at sunset; photo credit: Cora Hersh
On the animal front, I’m disappointed to report that we haven’t seen any whales or marine mammals of any kind, as I had been hoping. There have been a few interesting birds at least, including a pair of red-footed boobys that preened themselves for a while on one of the ship’s high points. A couple days ago we noticed one plover wandering around the deck, who definitely is not supposed to be this far from land. One of the ABs gave it a little bit of fish left over from dinner and we’re all hoping it makes it until we reach Guam. Some of the crew members also found a tiny jumping spider on the boat and have been keeping it in a jar and trying to find small insects (few and far between this far out at sea) to feed it. Clearly there’s a lot going on around here.
I’m currently in a float-deploying lull, but we’ll pick up again in the last few days of the trip. Till next time!