Monday, August 15, 2011

Day Five

Evening!

I am happy to say that today was not nearly as crazy as yesterday in terms of collections.  I still managed to run analyses on 4 stations (yesterday was 5), but things really started to wind down in the evening as our last CTD casting went down to nearly 3,000m deep (almost 2 miles!).  Deployments this deep take almost three hours to drop and then retrieve.  In the meantime I managed to get some lab organization done, and then also got to read!

Besides running analyses, there were quite a few fun things to report. First, I have found the snack shelf on the ship.  Think industrial sized bins of gummy worms, red vines, popcorn, and Atomic Fireballs, all for the taking!  I may gain weight on this trip after all.  However, I've been fairly good about avoiding junk food this week so hopefully I can keep up the self-restraint.  If that wasn't bad enough, the desserts the cooks put out daily are enough to tempt any sweet tooth- apple pie, chocolate cake, and strawberry shortcake were on the menu for the last three days.

Candy stores!


Second, I was able to watch some deep-sea fishing by the crew earlier this afternoon. They caught a few various things, but most excitingly, a really nice albacore tuna.   I have actually never seen a freshly-caught tuna before, and boy was it pretty!  I had to get a camera out and explained that I've never seen one before, since we don't  have many tuna back in Wyoming.


Freshly-caught albacore tuna.  See boot in the top left corner for size comparison.

As it turns out, that comment sparked one of the cooks to chime in and say that he lived in Billings, Montana for 30 years - less than 2 hours away from Sheridan.  If that weren't weird enough, he is good friends with my old babysitter from elementary school.  How bizarre that I would run into somebody with two degrees of separation from me out in the middle of the Pacific!  It really is a small world sometimes.


This evening I helped with net tows again, which yielded very few creatures much to my disappointment.  Better luck tomorrow!  Right now we are a little north of Portland, so we may get some cool things when we reach central Oregon in the upwelling zones. However, the weather still held out for us, so it was nice just to be outside.

Invertebrate tow net.  I'll try to get a photo of me next time!

So I think that is about it for today!  I have been pretty tired since nine or so, so I'm ready to get some good sleep.

Peace,
Shea

Weather Today: Warm, gray, drizzly
Ocean: Smooth as glass!
Menu highlights: fully-loaded hot dogs, steak chili and macaroni for lunch, and an amazing dinner: stuffed pork chops, sweet potatoes, and salad with artichoke hearts. Yum!

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