Hi Everyone,
It is nice to say that we have finally started the proper physical oceanography part of the cruise, and celebrated this with a huge number of CTDs (6 in a day) which are actually “proper CTDs” in that we are taking more than four bottles of salt samples and taking some bottles for oxygen isotopes. This means that the physical oceanography sampling has started in earnest and we will very quickly become very busy, with an average of 4 CTD casts every day and approximately 10-12 hours of saliometry and preparation. Thankfully this will be shared between myself and Chris, but will still be much busier than previous days. Honestly, I was amazed at how long the preparatory work took. I expected the salinometry to take a long time as it requires 24-48 bottles to be put through a complex machine, but just washing out 48 bottles thoroughly easily takes an hour, so it is always a rush to keep on schedule.
Because of this, today was quite busy, starting to get into the rhythm of things and helping others to get into the rhythm of things. As the A23 section is quite regular, a lot of people are getting into patterns with sampling from the underway (water taken directly into the ship) or from the CTD casts over the side, and we are helping out and coordinating some of these efforts.
In the spare time today, there was a little time for wildlife watching, though I didn’t see anything. During a CTD, a number of people saw a whale incredibly close to the ship (the second such encounter in 24 hours), which one person described as “possibly one of the top 5 experiences of my life”, but I was unfortunately busy sampling the CTD and so couldn’t make it outside in time. Hopefully there will be other chances. I did manage to participate in some “Kaboom” and briefly in some “Unreal Tournament” matches, where we discovered the “Capture the flag” mode. I do not think I was much of an asset to my team, but I had fun! One of the highlights of my day was sorting out my entertainment on the cruise.
Unfortunately, my long-suffering kindle broke about two weeks into the cruise, and so I had been relying solely on audiobooks for the last few days. These were fantastic, and “The story of China” has been keeping me entertained and sane through long hours sampling and measuring salts. But I was very happy to rediscover the ship’s library and acquire some pre-sleep reading. Overall, a very pleasant day and a good start to the sampling of A23.
PS. I spent ages trying to come up with a good CTD pun for today’s blog, if anyone thinks of one, do let me know and I might include it in a future blog.
07/01/23
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