We arrived just outside Tromso last Friday, the remaining scientists were dropped off to the ship by a ferry! Looked like an exciting ride.
It was great to see land after a week of sailing up the north sea. Norway looks beautiful, it has some fantastic mountain ranges that I think I will have to come back and climb/hike!
You can read Celeste's blog here:http://celestethelion.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/
We arrived at the first station that evening so we got to work straight away. We did a shake down CTD (Conductivity Temperature Density) system which measures all the way from the surface down to just above the sea floor. It is winched down at a steady rate. This piece of equipment is actually called a CTD rosette as mounted around it are grey bottles called Niskins, these allow us to capture water at what ever depth we want.
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| Busy deciding what depths are most interesting. One of the depths we measure mostly is the deep chlorophyll maximum, this is where the productivity is at it's highest throughout the water column. The other depths are deep and shallow usually dependant on what you are studying. So when the CTD rosette is brought back up we ask the computer to fire certain niskins at whatever depth all of the scientists desire. |
The big project that I am doing is a vertical tow of the water column to capture zooplankton. There are hundreds of copeopods here, these are full of lipids and fats which are feeding an entire lipid based foodweb!
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| So many! |
Crazy how filtering water can tell you so much!!1
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| The big one in the middle with antenna either side is what I am researching...a copepod! The deck crew call them coco pops, I quite like that! You can also spot a brittle star and a few other exciting things under the microscope ! |
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| Today we saw hundreds of Ctenophores, another of my favourites! Also, jellyfish that keep getting stuck to lots of the equipment! |
So much water being filtered by everyone!!!!
After the pelagic work the benthic work begins! A day grab is used to determine the type of sediment and ensure there are no big rocks to break the multi corer. This multi corer takes cores of the sediment.
With all of this sun, its basically sunbathing weather
Being British, lots of cups of teas have been getting us through the long days!
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| Everyone is supportive of everyone here, especially as lots of people cross over between a few of the projects but we are all basically working together to get lots of science done!! | | | | |
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| Look at the excitement! Love it |
Hopefully in the next week when we go past Svalbard when we should start seeing more ice and polarbears!!!!! We are currently at Station B4 heading to B6!! Not sure how long the internet will last, hopefully for one more week !
We arrived at the first station that evening so we got to work straight away. We did a shake down CTD (Conductivity Temperature Density) system which measures all the way from the surface down to just above the sea floor. It is winched down at a steady rate. This piece of equipment is actually called a CTD rosette as mounted around it are grey bottles called Niskins, these allow us to capture water at what ever depth we want. 
