Giant Orange Blobs and Shrunken Heads

Only a few more days until this adventure comes to an end. I haven’t blogged recently because nothing new has happened in weeks. I’m having a blast and staying relatively productive, but I do the same thing every day. I’m sure you don’t want to read about 30 days of my adventures while filtering seawater. Nevertheless, some exciting things have happened recently that are definitely blog-worthy.

The giant orange blobs: In the last week, we have seen three objects that can be classified as giant orange blobs, but unfortunately I could only take a picture of one of these things. The sunsets have become spectacular when the evenings are clear. It is worth it to stay up late and watch for the green flash. Similarly, the sunrises are gorgeous, but I’m rarely awake to watch them. Usually I have gone back to sleep for my morning nap. Another orange blob we saw one night was a moonset. I cannot accurately describe how beautiful a moonset on the ocean is. The full moon swelled up to twice its size and glowed a bright orange. As it sank past the horizon, it illuminated the water and made 2 a.m. look much brighter. The final giant orange blob was the most unusual of them all. We were collecting water from the CTD at 2 a.m. when bright orange blobs started to pass us in the wake of the ship. We realized they were jellyfish. These jellyfish were bright orange and some were larger than a beach ball! It was incredible! We saw hundreds of them in one night, but never saw them again. They are a fantastic mystery!

Shrunken heads: It happened Sunday. We sent all of our colorfully decorated heads down to the bottom of the sea, about 4000 meters deep! If you recall from the last cruise, the CTD returned without our Styrofoam heads and cups. It was devastating! We were determined not to let that happen again! Two Styrofoam-filled laundry bags (one of them being mine) were secured very tightly to the CTD. After waiting around for several hours, the CTD returned to the deck amongst a chorus of cheers. The shrunken heads had returned!! It is amazing how tiny the heads and cups had become. So much pressure!!

Before and After Pictures!

 

The countdown has begun and we will be back on land soon! It’s perfect timing because I’m pretty sure that all of us (especially me) are experiencing a bad dose of cabin fever!

Man Overboard!

The sunsets have been unbelievable
out here in the North Pacific!

I know it has been an awfully long time since I last posted, but the days fly by here and I remain insanely busy. So last time I posted, I had a set schedule and things were looking great. Since then, we have added another experiment (and approximately 2 more hours of filtering in the afternoon). Last cruise, Jennifer was in charge of this experiment but because the number of scientists has greatly decreased, I have taken it over. Basically, we collect water in a bunch of different bottles during a 4 am cast. These bottles are placed in 3 different incubators – one at the normal temperature, one 2 degrees colder, and one two degrees warmer. Every day, over the course of 4 days, we test the water to see if the abundance of phytoplankton (or any other characteristics of the phytoplankton) have changed. It been crazy busy aboard the Kilo Moana! So again, I apologize for leaving you hanging and not posting for a while. I’ll try to update you on the last week!

More storm petrels!

The animal sightings have continued. Not with whales this time, but with sharks and dolphins! One afternoon we saw a group of dolphins merrily splashing close to our boat. Then, during one of our 2 am casts, a few us saw a shark cut through the surface water above the CTD. It was only 4 or 5 feet long, but it was awesome! The following day, several of the scientists and crew members saw a large fin come of the water near the stern of the ship. Only one of the crew members got a good look at it and he claims it was a 10-foot great white shark!!! No one else could confirm it, but I choose to believe it because it is so exciting!! Remember the bird I talked about lat week? Well, that was just the beginning. One day this past week we ran into a flock of the storm petrels and at least 30 of them had hit the deck by the end of the morning CTD cast! This time, we threw them upwards when we tossed them overboard. When heaved up, they spread out their wings and flew away, instead of just splashing into the water. After dozens of birds flew right out of my hands, I felt a little like Snow White! 

Ellie in surgery :(

On sadder news, tragedy struck a few days ago in the Johnson Lab. My trusty fluorometer, Ellie, bit the dust. She suddenly started beeping alarms and flashing numbers that didn’t make any sense. Dr. Johnson and I immediately began surgery, trying to revive her by replacing the fuse, power cord, bulb, and other small parts. That day ended in failure. I started to use the Tennessee fluorometer, but it felt like I was cheating on Ellie. It was calibrated differently and I was getting crazy numbers! We decided to try a more complex surgery the next day and if it didn’t work, we would give up. After completely disemboweling Ellie we managed to get to the motor in her innermost compartment. A few adjustments and a dab of lubricant and suddenly, her heart started to beat again! She survived!! I am back to using her for my chlorophyll numbers and she is working perfectly! Happiness! Even though it was a tragic incident, it was kind of exciting. It perfectly demonstrates how difficult it is to perform research out here in the middle of nowhere. You can’t send it off to a repairman. You have to try and fix it on your own, usually by trial and error, and it feels amazing when you are successful!

In other news, Sunday was Hump Day! We are halfway there! We had our hump day presentations after dinner just to give everyone an idea of what our results looked like and where our research was headed next. It was fun and for a reward, we were given a Styrofoam head! Sometime in the next few weeks, we will send the CTD down to 4000 meters. We’ll attach the heads and other Styrofoam objects to the CTD and the pressure will shrink them! Obviously, if you give a bunch of cabin-fever-infected scientists a bunch of foam heads, mischief is bound to happen. I don’t think we have laughed this hard in a long time!

Me and Alyse. This is what swag looks like.

I definitely crawled down the hallway
like this, scaring any crew members that
happened upon me. It was hysterical!
(I think I'm going crazy!) 

P.S. No one fell overboard. I just couldn't think of a cool title for this blog post! :)

Noah's Ark!

The past two days have been extremely interesting!

Ultra-calm! You can barely distinguish
between the sky and the water!

First of all, last time I posted, I talked about how calm it was here. I was wrong. It was not calm a few days ago. It’s calm today. Like, ultra-calm. It looks like a lake out here. I had no idea the ocean could ever look like this! Especially the North Pacific! It’s like something out of Life of Pi! In all my travels on the ocean, I have never seen it this still before.  I guess I’m so astonished because on the last cruise, the giant waves were crashing over the 35-foot bow. This time, it is calm enough to see my reflection in the water. Once again, the ocean surprises me. I can’t help but see God reflected in the ocean. I mean, He is immense and powerful, yet merciful and loving. I could never fully understand Him, no matter how hard I try. I guess all this time on the ocean makes me a bit introspective! :)

This picture was taken by looking down
at the water from the bow. You can see
reflected clouds as well as my head!

Cold air, calm water

So we have traveled much farther North on this journey than on the last one. Currently, we are at the same latitude as someplace in Canada and it is cold! Along with the colder temperatures, we have noticed an increase in the levels of nutrients in the water column. These high abundances of nutrients cause a bloom in the amount of life in this region. I’m not just talking about Prochlorococcus. I’m also referring to jellyfish, squid, and an assortment of bioluminescent critters in the ocean. We have been marveling at all the creatures we can see lurking right below the surface as we pull the CTD out of the water.

All the scientists eagerly looking
for whales!

Most exciting was when we spotted a whole pod of Pilot whales swimming nearby. There must have been at least 10 of these extremely rare deep-diving mammals. It was exhilarating to see them spouting pretty close to the boat. They were moving fast, but we saw them on the approach and watched them as they passed us. It was amazing!

We have also kept a close look out for birds. It’s not uncommon to see albatrosses and other large birds soaring above the water. However, things got pretty interesting yesterday morning when we saw a bird the side of a sparrow flying around the stern of the boat during the midnight CTD cast. It’s unusual to see such small birds out here in the middle of nowhere. All of a sudden, WHAM! The bird flew into the loading bay and hit a wall! One of the crew members, Lawson, picked it up, thinking it was dead. Believe it or not, the little bird was still alive, but pretty dazed. We think the bird (called a Storm Petrel) had become distracted by all the lights shining around the back deck. Lawson told me to take it up to the bow (where there were fewer lights) and let it’s eyes adjust to the darkness, then toss it overboard so it could return to the wild. So, I went up to the bow and waited until I thought the little bird was ready to fly away. I help it over the water and dropped it, expecting it to fly away to its friends. All I heard was a little ‘plop’ and it hit the water! I screamed, thinking I had killed it (the screaming was probably a bad idea, considering I was on the bow of the ship in the middle of the night. I thought the captain would sound the alarm that someone had gone overboard, but luckily, all remained quiet aboard the Kilo Moana).

Our storm petrel! (check out his
webbed feet!)

Sadly, I walked back to the stern and informed my friends that I was a murderer. Then, a few minutes later as I about to recover the CTD, I saw the storm petrel again! This time it had a buddy and it was happily enjoying the natural environment! Yay!

With all these animals we have spotted, I feel like we are aboard Noah's Ark!

Just when I didn't think I could wake up any earlier...

The sky at 4:30 in the morning!

Everything has changed. Thursday was a perfectly normal day. We got up, deployed the CTD and collected our samples. Until that morning, I hadn’t realized how bright the sky was, even at 5 a.m. Most of the scientists have to put their samples in the incubators before daylight. Because it is summertime, the light lasts longer, and the sky started to brighten before 5, with no time for the scientists to put their samples in the incubators. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to notice this. By the end of the day, the head scientist, Dr. Johnson, declared that the CTD cast would occur at 2 a.m. instead of 4 a.m.! Yikes! So on Friday, we woke up at 1:30 in the morning. My schedule stays basically the same and I still manage to get a full night’s rest. However, I have a three-hour window of experiments in the middle of the night. I usually go to bed around 8, wake up at 1:30, go back to bed at 5, and wake up again around 9 or 10. It’s not ideal, but I can make it work!

In other news, today (Saturday) we deployed our first ARGO float. We have several of these yellow floats on board and they will be deployed when we reach certain places in the Pacific. Basically, these floats follow the currents and move up and down in the water column. Every time they resurface, they transmit their data (temperature, salinity, oxygen, etc.) to a satellite. Before sending the float on its way, we all signed our names to mark it's passage on the Kilo Moana.

Deploying the ARGO float

Sarah and I prepare to
recover the CTD, even in
the rain!

For those of you who read my blog during the last cruise, you will remember the absurd amount of posts that described the storms. About half the time we faced awful weather and even had to forego science on a few occasions due to the severity of the storms. I would keep my body clenched up tight each night for fear of falling out of bed during rough weather. This time is completely different. It’s hard to believe how calm it is out here. We still have some rain showers and foggy days, but the sea itself is calm. I can actually walk down the hallway without using the handrails.  I can get a full night’s rest (minus the time taken away for the CTD cast) without waking up with my legs thrown off the bed by an extra large wave. Sometimes, I actually forget that I am on a boat. It is so calm! Yay!

In other news, the Internet here is extremely spotty. If I don’t post for a few days, have no fear! I will post again as soon as the Internet starts working!

The scientists hang out in the loading bay
in the breaks between experiments
(and when there is no Internet)

The Fourth of July - Kilo Moana style

Happy Independence Day from the middle of the Pacific Ocean! We might not have been able to celebrate this memorable occasion in the traditional way, but we added out own style to the festivities. The day began at 4 am, as usually and I definitely noticed that most people were wearing red, white, or blue shirts, myself included. One of the scientists had even brought a few American Flags to display around the labs. Once we had gathered our samples and returned to our lab benches to begin our experiments, Alyse turned on an “America” playlist. These songs included: Party in the U.S.A. (Miley Cyrus), American Pie (Don McLean), Firework (Katy Perry), and Surfin’ U.S.A (The Beach Boys). Obviously, they weren’t the traditional patriotic songs, but they definitely got us into the American Spirit! For lunch, our amazing chef, Debby, prepared a traditional 4^th of July barbecue complete with chili-cheese dogs, potato salad, and watermelon (although the watermelon was seedless, so we couldn’t have any seed-spitting contests)!

Since I have been on the boat for a few days now, I have finally gotten into a pretty regular schedule. My day always starts at 3:30 in the morning and here’s an example of a typical day:

-Deploy the CTD and prepare my experiment

-Tag the CTD and bring it back on board the ship

-Gather my water samples from 10 different depths

-Perform my filtering experiments and prepare the sterivex filters

-Go back to bed (usually around 7 am)

-Wake up around 10

-Hang out until lunch at 11:15

-Deploy another CTD at noon

-Once it is back on the deck, gather one more sample of the surface water to filter it

-Free time until 3 pm (study for GRE, look at Grad schools, hang out in the sunshine, etc)

-Fluorometer readings at 3

-Work out in the gym or on deck

-Dinner!

-Movie in the lounge

-Bedtime around 8 or 9

Now that I have a schedule, I feel much more in control. Since we work everyday of the week, it’s easy to lose track of the days. My schedule is like clockwork and helps me to keep track of everything.

We finished off the 4^th of July with a beautiful Independence Day cake and then hit the hay!

God Bless the U.S.A!

Megafauna (and microfauna) sampling!

Fishing!

Last night was the final chance for uninterrupted sleep and it was a marvelous sleep! The rocking of the ship lulls me to sleep before my head even hits the pillow. This morning I woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready for what the day would hold. Why was I so excited this morning (besides the fact that I am usually excited about all things nautical)? Because this morning we were going to be sampling the megafauna, i.e. fishing!!! We set up the rigs, cast out the lines, and waited for the unsuspecting fish to take a bite of the colorful lures. On the last cruise aboard the Kilo Moana, the deck became a hive of activity as we pulled in multiple Big Eye Tunas. This time however, (almost) all our hopes were dashed. Ming was the only one to successfully haul a fish onto the deck. The rest of us waited around to no avail. I guess the fish just weren’t biting. Long after everyone else had given up, I sat at the stern with my legs dangling over the edge and watching for fish to pull on the lines. After 3 hours of trolling, we finally decided to call it a day. No more fishing. My guess is that the fish heard rumors that the crazy girl with no mercy (when it comes to fish) was back in the neighborhood and decided to lay low for the day. My reputation precedes me!

Ming dissects his fish!

 After that rather lack-luster morning, we deployed our noon cast and worked on our experiments. This time my workload has more than doubled because there are fewer scientists on this trip than the last one. I am still establishing the chlorophyll depth profiles but now I am also working on the temperature-shift experiments (using chlorophyll abundance as an indicator) as well as preparing the sterivex filters. The sterivex filters are frozen and analyzed at a later date, but all the chlorophyll data is available day by day. I’m able to see the results within 24 hours. This makes everything so much more exciting!

All the scientists gather around the CTD
like piglets hungry for milk!
a.k.a. microfauna sampling 

Aloha from Hawaii (Part 2)

It has been a really really long time since I have updated this blog. My last post detailed my experiences in Malaysia, but shortly after returning to Singapore, everything became extremely busy. I had a wonderful last week in Singapore and I hope I have the opportunity to return someday. The only day I wanted to mention in this extremely belated post was Easter Sunday. In the morning, we went on a long hike to the highest point on the island. It was a tough but exciting hike with monkeys racing though the treetops above us. The hike was in the morning, so I wasn’t able to attend an Easter Sunrise service. However, we didn’t have anything scheduled for the afternoon or night, so I wandered to the local Baptist church. Everyone there was extremely welcoming and friendly. The service was spoken in Chinese and English, so I could understand it but I also had the chance to experience the local Chinese language. The most incredible part of the service was that we sang the same songs that I usually sing on Easter at my home church in Lake City. It made me nostalgic for home, but also made me revel in the holiness of our God. It’s hard to believe that two very different cultures from across the world celebrate and worship the same God. I guess it just made me realize how powerful and amazing He is! Praise the Lord! 

After returning from Singapore, I took one more class at the Marine Lab and then headed up to Boston to join my dad in the 100-mile Wilderness. For those of you who don’t know, this is the northernmost section of the Appalachian Trail and is also the most remote. Dad and I were the first people on the trail for the season and we soon understood why. The middle section of the trail was completely covered with snow. We tried to fight our way through it for hours, but the trail became impassible shortly before the halfway point. We had to turn around and take a side trail out of the wilderness, but we definitely plan on finishing it someday!

I am currently writing this new post from the deck of the Kilo Moana. Yep! I’m back in Hawaii for the summer version of the research cruise that I participated in this past winter. After a hectic travel day, we spent yesterday preparing the vessel for the upcoming cruise by unpacking boxes, setting up the equipment, and strapping everything down. Last night, all the scientists went out to eat, which is a tradition before embarking on each cruise. There are fewer scientists than the last cruise, but everyone is friendly and enthusiastic about the upcoming month. I had a blast making new friends and catching up with the friends from the last cruise!

6 a.m. sunrise on the
Kilo Moana

Justin and Ming performed surgery
on our broken vortex

This morning we were supposed to have breakfast at 6:30, but I was too excited and woke up at 5:45 without even considering trying to get back to sleep. I was super pumped to get out to sea again! Unfortunately, first we had to stop at the fuel dock to fill up the tank. The Kilo Moana can hold 185,000 gallons of fuel and it took around 6 hours to fill her up! In the meantime, we finalized setting up the labs and fixing the little kinks and problems. Finally, we were all filled up and ready to sail into the sunset! The rocking and rolling of the ship feels familiar and I hope I won’t have any problems preparing my sea legs. So far, everything is okay! We even performed our first CTD cast. It was just warm-up round to make sure all the instruments were working and everyone knew what to do. I think it went well! We have one more night of uninterrupted sleep tonight and then everything starts up for real with 4 a.m. casts! I’m so excited! I honestly didn’t think I would be back here again, but now that I am, I am thrilled! It will be a great month!

The three Duke undergrads:
Justin, Me and Ming

Goodbye, Hawaii!