After 13 months on land, I'm back at sea

Aloha. I'm back on the Kilo Moana for another mission. This is a short HOTS (that stands for Hawaii Ocean Time Series) cruise. We left port near Sand Island this morning (July 2) at about 9am, stopped just west of 'O'ahu for one station of data sampling, and now we're headed north towards the station where the bulk of the science will take place.

I have a bit of a computer situation, and to make a long story short, I'll be blogging short messages without (for the time being) pictures. I'll see if this can be remedied any time soon.

The point of the cruise is to see what's changing in the ocean over time. Dissolved carbon dioxide (and the acidity associated with it) seems to be rising just as atmospheric carbon dioxide is rising, and this project is largely motivated by studying the details of that. But as long as we're headed out (and HOTS cruises go out about monthly), there's plenty more science to be done, and plenty more scientists jumping at the chance to join and study their particular interests. On this cruise, we seem to have several biological types, one group interested in the chlorophyll in the water (which means the photosynthsizers in the water), and another interested in the DNA in the water (which means all the life in the water, I guess.)

There's also a group from UW studying CFC's (remember those from the ozone-days?) as a tracer. Because CFC's entered the water at the surface all over the world (back when we didn't know better), the water that was then at the surface is now marked with a CFC signature - a signature which isn't likely to be erased because CFC's are so unreactive. (They're also harmless to marine life, as far as we know.) So measuring CFC's in water can help researchers learn something about circulation and mixing.

We're an interesting mix - from the ship's employees, to scientists, to us lowly volunteers. We have a 13-year-old intern joining us, as well as an interesting volunteer whom I'll call Steve. Steve is "like me" - he has a family and a career, and he's out here to do something different and learn something. But in real life he's an entrepreneur, and among other things, he has a website that apparently everybody checks and gets a bazillion hits - it's called engrish.com and you should check it out.

If you want to know more details about the ship (like where we are in real time), you can check the ship's website http://iminia.soest.hawaii.edu/UMC/amarcen.htm Let me know if that doesn't work.

I'll do my best to keep up with this as often as I can - hopefully with frequent but short updates.

Patricia