By Eric Collins, University of Alaska Fairbanks Have you ever held your breath and tried to dive to the bottom of a swimming pool? If you have, you might have noticed that you have to ‘pop’ your ears at some point because pressure builds up the further down you go. You might notice that… Continue reading
When Bridget deployed the glider the other day, she left the spare wings in the small boat, and then later she went back and couldn’t find them. Well, yesterday, the note pictured below was found attached to her door. It reads: “if you want the kids back alive (and mostly) unharmed… leave $2.50 by the… Continue reading
Today I filtered seawater from a variety of depths in the upper ocean (from the surface down to 120 meters) to collect marine plankton cells that live throughout the sunlit portion of the ocean. I am interested in microbial activities in the surface ocean because this is where sunlight and atmospheric carbon dioxide are captured… Continue reading
As a microbiologist, I’m used to studying things I cannot see. Microorganisms inhabit the world around us, living in places too harsh for humans (like hot springs, salt lakes, and in sea ice). They are also incredibly abundant with estimates of 1030 cells on the planet (there are an estimated 1021 stars in the universe,… Continue reading
Sediment traps catch sinking matter in the ocean. Yesterday I deployed a drifting NetTrap close by Cherry Bank. NetTraps are very large, which allows them to collect a lot of material in a short time period. We left the sediment trap floating in the ocean for 24 hours while we mapped Cherry Bank. Then today… Continue reading
A Webb Slocum glider named Rusalka is an autonomous underwater vehicle aka a robot that is joining the cruise research efforts. Rusalka was deployed on Sunday afternoon and will be gliding through the water in the research area until Wednesday afternoon. It was an exciting deployment day, because the first attempted was unsuccessful as Rusalka… Continue reading
My own research on this cruise involves coring to collecting seafloor sediments to study the foraminifera (protists with a hard shell, or “test,” that are commonly preserved in marine sediments) that live on the seafloor in low oxygen environments. Forams are pretty rad, and I will probably write another post about how rad they are,… Continue reading
Obviously, science is the reason we’re out here, but when you go on these big research trips it’s important to have goals beyond the science you hope to accomplish. Climbing a mountain near your field area, or something along those lines. It’s good for your sanity. I have always wanted to see dolphins swimming along… Continue reading
^right there. Specifically, we’re in the middle of a CTD cast at the first station of theCherry Bank transect, labelled on this map as 4. We’re spending the whole next day taking water and surveying Cherry Bank, an shallow bathymetric feature (<100 m at its shallowest) where deep, nutrient-rich waters are pushed up to the… Continue reading
For some reason, sitting on a boat that’s stationary and tied up to the dock is just torture. Probably because it feels like you SHOULD be at sea going somewhere and doing something cool, but you’re not. Or you could be in town enjoying a beer, but you’re not. Instead, you are just sitting in a… Continue reading
