Station 1

Posted on February 17, 2023  •  2 minutes  • 307 words

At 5 in the morning on Friday, February 17th, after 10 days sea, and I put my first samples in the freezer.

It’s been a surprisingly unruly journey to this point. I told you about logistics in the last post, but since then we encountered really active, windy seas and a bout of norovirus that raged through the science party. The combination was intense, and really not very fun. After about 4 days of transit the virus had run its course, the seas turned calm and the science party was able to regain our sea legs, stomachs and enthusiasm for the trip.

We reached our target site, a location not too far off of the coast of Mexico, at 17:00 Wednesday evening. The first act was to cast out the CTD for a water column profile to check to see if we’d, indeed, reached the ENTP Oxygen Minimum Zone. Sure enough, at around 50 meters below the surface our oxygen sensors showed oxygen levels below the limits of detection, confirming that we were floating on top of a watermass effectively devoid of oxygen.

The water sampling fest began that evening, but my chance for water didn’t come until 17:00 the following day, much later than expected but very welcome when it finally came. This began a 12 hour shift, of which I’ve still got 2 to go.

My insomnia training as a mom of two littles has prepared me well for tonight as I’m feeling OK given that I’ve been up for 22 hours. But really, this is some of the fun of field work at sea. You’re here to do science, whenever it happens. Two more hours until breakfast then bed for me, which sounds great right now.

If you’d like an expedition-sanctioned version of events, I encourage you to check out the MicroPro blog .