We arrived at station 1 about an hour ago and are working out some kinks with the CTD before getting started. "CTD" is a water sampling Rossette and stands for conductivity, temperature, and depth - it measures each of these electronically while also bringing up water samples. Once the CTD is complete, Michael - a Ph. D. student from UConn - will be collecting zooplankton samples. Once Michael is finished we will use a trace metal clean (TMC) Rossette to collect more water. The TMC Rossette has acid cleaned bottles and a special metal-free line to assure that the collection process is not contaminating the water samples with any trace metals. Once the Rossette surfaces, the bottles will be transferred to our on-deck clean lab to retrieve the samples. Lastly will be the sediment sampling, which is the team myself, Dr. Hammerschmidt, Geraldine, and Lisa will be working on.
It's about 8:30PM now which means we should be starting box coring around 12:00AM! The coring should take 1-2 hours so it will be a late night but also very exciting as it is our first station!
Pictured above is the water team deploying the Trace Metal Clean Rossette earlier today. The Rossette was filled with seawater and left to soak all day to condition the bottles. Each bottle (long column) is programmed to open and close at a specific depth and can detach from the frame to be emptied in the clean lab.
-Katlin
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