Land Ho & Dolphins!

Natalie Greenbaum, UMass, Amherst

Hello land lubbers! Natalie from C Watch here. Today has been quite an eventful day. After a rocky night filled with many gybes, I awoke to my 0620 wake up call for breakfast. After some delightful breakfast burritos, I began my morning watch (0700-1300). Today, I was in lab. First, we “hove to” which pulls all the sails in super tight so we don’t move. We then gently lowered the hydrocast soon after.

The hydrocast collects seawater at various depths and we got some from 250m below the surface! Go science! Next, we got Mr. Seamans rolling again to a nice 2 knots. We did this so that we could toss over the Neuston net. The Neuston net is deployed for 30 minutes and collects a sample of surface water organisms at the surface for 1 nautical mile. It collects copious amounts of goop (zooplankton) in the jar at the bottom which is very fun to sort through!

After watch, we began motoring through Urupukapuka Islands. We passed a rock (mini island?) that had a natural arch in it and were quickly blessed with another DOLPHIN SIGHTING! There were about 5 of them that played in the waves of our bow for a while and we all were absolutely rocked by the sighting. What an eventful day! The island we are at is very lush and beautiful and I cannot wait to explore it tomorrow!

Shout-out to my parents (please give our ailing dog a big smooch for me), all my pals, and everyone else who reads this!

XOXO,

Natalie