Life Beyond the Beaker

So we are still bobbing around the North Atlantic nearer to Greenland now...almost heading back home via Iceland! The Google Earth image above shows all of the mooring and CTD stations that we are completing along the OSNAP E transect! You can see our position tracking on the Marine Traffic website: https://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/details/ships/9688946 Here is the position of the mooring buoys south of Iceland. Firstly we sampled within Rockall Trough, which is near Scotland, then we scooted over to the Icelandic Basin followed by the western Irminger Basin, and we are now working our way back to Reykjavik.  Why are we here? WHOI (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) explains: ''The vast interface of ocean and atmosphere constitutes one of the Earth’s great interactive engines. The OSNAP program is investing the upper-ocean and atmospheric processes and their influences on one another.'' The mooring buoys that we are deploying are aiding in resear...

Jeanne and I have had an intense week of 12 hours and 12 hours off shift work (and it's continuing). We don't see each other much except for a quick 5 minute handover and to tell her that most importantly that I've saved her some pancakes and strawberries! So our job on this cruise is to calibrate instruments. These instruments include the CTD, instruments like microcats which are placed on the mooring buoys. These mooring buoys will be measuring pressure (depth), salinity, temperature, oxygen and many other oceanographic parameters. The most important one on that list for us is the oxygen sensors that are both on the CTD and the moorings. So Jeanne and I conduct oxygen titrations using a Titrino Winkler Titrator (photos of titrator http://sazreed.blogspot.com/2018/06/what-we-got-up-to-on-jr17005-nerc.html ) to measure the dissolved oxygen concentration at different depths (using the grey niskins fired at different depths) and this is then compared against the sensors m...

My job has changed in the last few months and my job title is now an Arctic and Sea going Technician! I am funded 50 % on the DIAPOD project with Prof. Dave Pond however, he's now moved to Stirling to work in their new lipid lab! So SAMs decided to keep me on as a technician. So on the last cruise up in the Arctic Debi and Rich trained me up in Winkler Titration which is a measurement of the oxygen concentration in sea water. Which brings me onto what I'm doing now... I have joined the OSNAP cruise to complete oxygen measurements. These are incredibly important data points as the measurements are being used to calibrate oceanographic moorings that have or will be at sea for 2 year down to depths of 2500 m. Cruise Prospectus OSNAP "East" Cruise R/V Neil Armstrong (July 1-30, 2018), Reykjavik to Reykjavik The specific objectives of this cruise are as follows (written by Stuart Cunningham, the principal investigator on the project): ...