Today is our last day of waking up anytime after 4 a.m.!
This time, we woke up at 6 and prepared for departure. It was hard not to try
to help the crew cast off, but I realize that I would just get in the way.
Better let the professionals take care of it. We motored our way through the
shipping section of Honolulu and made our way to the entrance of the port. It
was amazing to see the shoreline slip away behind us, knowing that it would
soon be out of sight for a long time.
Jennifer, me, and Carrie just before we left the harbor
Immediately after leaving the harbor, we had a safety drill
to practice what to do in an emergency. We donned the usual life jackets, but
all the newbees on the ship had to also practice getting into our survival
suits. These suits will keep us warm and alive in case we fall overboard. They
are also called gumby suits because we all looked like giant red gumbys!
Try to figure out which one is me!
We made our way to the lee side of the island so we could
practice lowering the rosette into the water. The rosette is an 1100 pound
piece of equipment that is lowered by an A-frame crane into the water and sent
to a specific depth. 24 bottles are attached and they can be remotely closed to
capture the water from a specific depth. We practiced twice without going very
deep and then we practiced a 1000-meter drop to collect our first round of
samples. Lower the rosette into the water takes a lot of work and at least 3 of
the scientists have to be on duty to help. We switched off roles and I was a
“tagger” on the final drop. A tagger basically holds onto and slowly feeds out
a line that is attached to the rosette to make sure it doesn’t swing too much
when it is in the air. We even get to wear hard hats! It took almost an hour to
do the final drop because it takes so long to get to 1000 meters.
Once the rosette was back on the deck, we collected our
samples from the bottles corresponding to specific depths. I filled my bottles
and then prepared my filtration system. On a given day, I will be filtering 40
samples of water, 4 from each depth: 2 with a .8 mm filter and two with a .2 mm
filter. Good thing that today was only practice because I seriously messed up!
After dinner, we said our final goodbyes to land. We won’t
be seeing any shoreline for another month!
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