550 Meters Down

Maia Anderson, American University

Well hello there, land people! You’ve guessed it. It’s me, Maia. Today A watch woke up at 0600 for breakfast to start the day off with morning watch (0700-1300). After a not so good night of sleep from a lot of rocking, my mood was quickly turned around when I realized I was in lab! And oh did we have an exciting morning planned!!! We had three deployments this morning:

the phyto-net (designed to catch phytoplankton a couple meters below the surface), the neuston net (designed to catch zooplankton near the water’s surface), and the carousel. The carousel is a large structure with 12 niskin bottles that are programmed to close at different depths of the ocean. Today we brought the carousel to 550 meters down to collect water samples for pH, alkalinity, nitrates, phosphates, and chlorophyll-a. Fun fact: that means the carousel went about 6 football fields deep in about 12 minutes. YAY SCIENCE! We also saw an albatross (honestly I did not see it, but word gets around quickly on this boat and there was indeed a large bird seen).

After a busy morning of deployment there was time to get some work done and chill for a bit before having dawn watch from 0100-0700. It is a packed 24 hours for A watch so sadly it is time for me to get some rest before watch.

Goodnight friends!

Special shout-out to everyone who reads this, my family, Nathan, my friends, and most importantly my three fury best friends.

So much love,

Maia