Ah, today was a good day. I caught up on my sleep in the morning, woke up around 8:00, and got some coffee from Polar SBC. Boy did that help my morning. Nothing like a big cup of coffee to get you ready to work.
I went to the dry-lab, and did the salinities for the core we had most
recently taken. The
ice had melted overnight, so we were all set to run some tests on it.
After the salinities, I started labeling test-tubes while Mr. Buckley
filtered the water. We didn't run any colorimeter tests, which I was surprised
by, since Mr. Buckley seems quite intrigued by whether or not chlorophyll
A and B have different absorption levels of green and red wavelengths
of light. But we filtered the samples nonetheless, and stuck them in the
refrigerator for the rest of the day. Tomorrow we will run them through
the fluorometer, and get those readings, and then we will be done with
that core. I hope we get to go out again and collect some more samples...
That is definitely the most fun part -- anticipating the thought of what
might come up with the core.
We finished that task and then went and got some lunch. After lunch I hung around in the dry-lab for a while, and then went to my room to play a little guitar. There wasn't a whole lot going on, since the winches were not working properly, we had to abandon the trawl. We couldn't do any box cores because the conditions on the bottom weren't any good. That pretty much cut our station short.
While I was playing guitar, a crew member knocked on my door and invited me to play with him and some other guys on Sunday. I am looking forward to that. Music is the best pastime for this type of situation. I have trouble making it to the movies, and really don't feel that inclined to go. I'd much rather sit back and listen to any kind of music.
After that, I had a long work-out. Instead of just pounding away on that stair-stepper, I started on the rowing machine. I rowed for about 15 minutes at a brisk pace, and then hopped on the bike. I did two twelve minute hill workouts while waiting for a person to get off the stairstepper. I had done all of this as seamlessly as possible (because you don't get to rest in a race), and then jumped on the stair-stepper for twenty minutes. I found out that the bike it much more effective at building hamstrings than the stair-stepper, and I believe that it is probably more effective overall. I wasn't to pleased with the rowing machine, though. It gave me an upper-body workout, but the seat cut off circulation to my legs. Next time I will bring along some foam or something to place on the seat.
After dinner, I waited till 1900 rolled around and went to the lectures being held. It was Terry Tucker, Bill Bosworth, and Bob Whritner. They were all talking about their experiences on Sheba, and what they did on there. Terry was more focused on the work at Sheba, while Bob talked about life aboard Sheba, and how they dealt with arctic ice problems (such as polar bears attacking their weather instruments, and the sea-ice splitting up the middle of their camp). Bill then talked about similar things as Bob, and passed around photos.
After
the lectures, which were very interesting, I went to start writing this
journal, but learned that the winch that held the trawl was fixed, and
they were about to do a trawl, signifying that the station was NOT in
fact over. So I headed to the helo deck, and peered over as they sifted
through the contents of the trawl. They hauled an incredible amount of
sand-dollars, and an occasional Hermit Crab, and a whole bunch of starfish.
One of the starfish had arm that branched out numerous times, starting
with five legs, and each of those branching off into two, and each of
those into two, etc. It looked pretty magnificent, but not happy about
being suddenly on the deck of a boat. That is why it was all curled up.