Friday, August 10, 2012

Day 12 (Aug 10 2012)

Sampling day number two.  Which started out with a tired, demoralized crew (we have been working way too much, and the long hours are definitely taking their toll) and a mysteriously drained Milli-Q deionized, distilled water system (it appears to be fairly easy to accidentally not entirely shut off).  But the water sampling went well (we shaved 20 minutes off our time from the day before yesterday) and the filtration went well and there were lots of soothing carbohydrates at lunch, so by the early afternoon everyone who was cross with each other had kissed and made up and we managed to get our zooplankton team finally organized and out of the starting blocks and working on a well organized set of experiments;  sometimes it actually does work to get 7 scientists into the same room to bounce ideas around).

Things got even better in the evening, when Briva discovered that there are little snotty balls of phytoplankton in the rolling tanks (PHEW!), in counter to our worst expectations (the amount of phytoplankton in the water is distressingly low).  And the calcite experiment is beginning to generate some interesting and totally unexpected results.  Which I can't tell you about.  Because sometimes science is like that.  :)





Aug 10 2012a-  Bailing out the boat is a good way to get the blood flowing in the morning.






Aug 10 2012b-  A pile of carboys in the boat.





Aug 10 2012c-  Morris saying goodbye to Alain, who left after breakfast, having completed his mission of setting up the camera to track the formation of aggregates in rolling tanks.






Aug 10 2012d- Can you see the "jellyfish face" with two round eyes and one round mouth that was alternately fascinating me and freaking me out while I was out hanging my useless oxygen incubations out in the mesocosms in the late morning?  It's like the jelly saw a big, smooth, and alluringly curvy mesocosm bag and fell in love.  Either that or it just accidentally got stuck to the side of the bag.






Aug 10 2012e-  Big mollusk!






Aug 10 2012f-  The zooplankton team is about to test out their new net.  Morris, however, intruded upon the photo opportunity.








Aug 10 2012g- Yech!






Aug 10 2012h-  There we go;  that's better.  Check out that masterful plankton net.






Aug 10 2012i-  Hey!  It's skaterat Lampitt at your service, aka (I guess) The Lawn Ranger.  At least that is what it says on the hat.







Aug 10 2012j-  Skaterat Lampitt has been peitioning heavily for a raft to work on, so Jussi built him one.  Now we just need to add buoyancy to it.






Aug 10 2012k-  Gathering some troops to haul it down the hill to the water.





Aug 10 2012l-  Heave ho!





Aug 10 2012m-  Heading off.





Aug 10 2012n-  Marching down the hill.  And, rats!  A bit of dog slobber has found its way on to the lens.  I'm afraid for the rest of today, the pictures are slightly fuzzy because of this.  Rats!  Rats!  Rats!





Aug 10 2012o-  Made it down to the road.





Aug 10 2012p-  Morris leads the way.





Aug 10 2012q-  Good grief.  Are we not there yet?





Aug 10 2012r-  Nope.  Still not there yet.





Aug 10 2012s-  Tromp, tromp, tromp, tromp....





Aug 10 2012t-  The beach at long last, and, phew, is the photographer ever tired after all that work.






Aug 10 2012u-  Turning it belly up so that floaty bits can be added.





Aug 10 2012v-  Like styrofoam boards and empty carboys.  Pity about the spigots, though.  Unless you are quite fond of living life on the edge.






Aug 10 2012w-  Lashing everything in place.





Aug 10 2012x-  Because you really don't want the floats suddenly popping out from underneath the raft while you are standing on it in the middle of the bay.






Aug 10 2012y-  Morten has found a mast.






Aug 10 2012z-  Morris, however, had other ideas.







Aug 10 2012za-  A struggle ensues.





Aug 10 2012zb-  Morris inevitably wins.









Aug 10 2012zc-  Righting the raft.





 Aug 10 2012zd-  Lowering it into the water.






Aug 10 2012ze-  Jointly accepting the honor/responsibility of being the first on board.  Is it seaworthy or are the carboys going to come pinging out the sides sending Sari off into peals of laughter at the absurdity of it all (and Richard and Jussi into the drink)?









Aug 10 2012zf-  So far, so good.  Jumping up and down together just to be sure....






Aug 10 2012zg-  OK.  Great.  But now...  We're out here.  The oars are not.  And that water is just ever so slightly deeper than rubber boot deep.  And Richard isn't even wearing rubber boots.






Aug 10 2012zh-  The ever unflustered Morten quickly lashes together a rope with a stick on the end of it and trys to get Morris to deliver it to his master.  Unfortunately, as Jussi pointed out, he's born, bred, and trains to fetch things OUT of the water, not bring them into it.





Aug 10 2012zi-  However, eventually we get the other end of the line out to them and we employ Morris' services to haul them in.






Aug 10 2012zj- Sari is hauling the raft around to the other side where there is a convenient parking place for it, in between the motor boat and the rowboat.







Aug 10 2012zk-  However, Prof.  Lampitt is not going to be let in until he has (finally already!) read a draft of Sari's latest paper.


So ends this latest edition of "Summer Camp for Scientists".  Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting episode.


Meanwhile, back at the lab:



Aug 10 2012zl-  We have a clear result from the experiment being conducted on the denizens of the dry lab.  








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