Squit! cable kinks

There were some mysterious kinks in the cable for a few of the CTD casts last week. The cause was not known, but the working theory was that it had something to do with the rough weather causing the ship to roll, thereby introducing slack into the line. A slack line combined with deep ocean currents jerking the CTD package around probably created these irreparable kinks in the cable... but no one could figure it out for sure. There were no indications of unusual ship rolls or CTD movement.

It was my opinion that the kinks were caused by marine life. So I stayed up late one night and watched a rosette cast from start to finish, and I saw with my own eyes what caused the cable kinks. With my handy Nikon D70s, I produced this image:

Dave, my bunkmate

I have just been informed that Dave’s parents are reading this blog. Well, I might at times seem like just an average mild-mannered blogger, but I’m a nasty muckraker at heart. So here it is: all the dirt on my bunkmate Dave.

1. He looks 6’3” or something, but he’s not as tall as he looks. How does he do this? Well, have you ever seen the movie Gataca? The main character—-a genetically deficient short man—-really wants to look like an overachiever, so he gets his legs surgically elongated. But the moral of the story was: bad genes can still go a long way. I say: shoot for the moon, Dave, shoot for the moon.

2. Yesterday was hump day, the midway point of the voyage, so Dave forced me to switch bunks. Now I’m in the top bunk. He did this completely out of spite, but he didn’t realize that hot air rises and the top bunk is actually warmer and preferable. I’ll let him go on thinking he’s won a vicious little victory, but the truth is, Dave is too incompetent to even be mean. Poor upbringing, I say. Possibly bad genes too.

3. The joke Dave likes telling the most is a long winded story about a brick-throwing contest. It’s very long and stupid—-I refuse to go into more detail. If you’re curious, try googling it, I guess. Anyway, where did he get this joke from? Most likely from deficient childhood experiences.

4. Dave has been reading The Life of Pi for the past week, and he’s still only 50 pages into the thing. I’ll admit, I thought that book was one of the hugest, sloppiest turds ever, but still, what a slow reader! Combination bad genes and poor upbringing. Double whammy.

There you have it, Mr. and Mrs. Ullman... the truth about your son Dave.

Fire Drills

(by Pien Huang)

Sundays are for fire drills and steak. They used to be for wine too, but that was axed with the UNOLS (some category that encompasses all university research vessels) Prohibition some four months ago. Everybody still talks about it, but it’s more for conversation than for spirited discussion. It’s one of the few things we have in common. Three weeks in and we are still wary of offending each other, as we’ve got three more weeks to go. The only affable insult is to trash-talk in card games, so we play a lot of cribbage.

We’ve had three fire drills and one abandon ship drill so far. Fire drills are preferable, as they are indoors and less involved. You grab the life jacket from your room, and muster to the main lab. You have to wear a hat, and sometimes the forgetfuls pile sweaters on their heads. I played victim in one of the fire drills, which involved sitting in the bowels of the ship with a fog machine. It was misty and I imagined gorillas. Then I heard footsteps and remembered to call for help.

The weather is warmer, even as the wind and the waves are getting stronger. Our cables are kinking, but nobody knows why. This might be logged into the Captain’s binder of Non-Conformity Reports on the R/V Revelle, which date back to the unfortunate year 2004 when an overloaded winch “frisbeed” across a room, and the main cook stuck his hand in the industrial mixer. Most of their findings prescribe common sense.

The ocean makes me sick, but it comes and goes. Foul weather is coming on. We’re losing time because of cable kinks. At breakfast this morning, Anthony from Helium observed that nothing from his personal list gets done. Procrastinating without Wikipedia is just as easy, but less validating. I live inside my head. Every midnight I crave Ramen, and there is an endless supply. Overall, life is not bad, but never great.

Hump Day

Today is hump day, which marks the midway point of the voyage. It’s sort of a sad thing: from here on out, it’s just science science science and no more icebergs. In a week or two, we’ll have passed far enough north to hit warm waters and shorts weather, but for now it’s a grind: a 3-hour cast followed by a 3-hour transit to the next station, and repeat. Breaks are made only to accomodate bad weather or equipment failure; everyone is on one of two 12-hour shifts so casts and the labs can run round the clock. I no longer see much of the midnight-to-noon ‘night sprites.’

It’s sort of like the famed “sophomore slump”: the weather’s poop and presently there’s little to look forward to but more of the same. We’re back in the rough seas of the Roaring Fifties, which really is not like going to Starbucks, which I’d sure like to do.

Of course, as some guy in The Life Aquatic DVD extras was quoted as having once said, ‘an optimist is someone who sees the opportunity in every challenge’ (while a pessimist sees the challenge in every opportunity). And I’ve discovered a sort of awesome opportunity: there’s a neat option in computer Solitaire that lets you tally your $ winnings over multiple games. Vegas baby! It’s really really fun and I consider myself a lucky person for having found it.

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Here are a few photos taken during our exit of the Antarctic region.

Anthony’s Helium/Tritium collection procedure is pretty cool. The final step is to seal off a sample in a glass bulb (by using a torch).

The CFC sampler wears crazy gloves.

The crew blast ice off the deck with seawater.

This is the optical device that’s cast once a day; it measures the spectrum of light absorbed at different depths, which give information about the types of organic matter present.

The water near Antarctica was very calm, being shielded from currents by ice and the continental shelf.

During our exit of the Antarctic region, we would often find ourselves surrounded by dozens of icebergs. The crew found it rather stressful.

The neatest iceberg we saw.

Another neat one.

We were told to look for splashes on icebergs; they’re bigger than they ought to be.

During some relatively calm water, we sent a Zodiac rescue boat out with Chief Engineer Paul and 3rd Mate Favi. Why? For the scenic opportunity, of course:

(courtesy of JJ Becker) Iceberg! Dead ahead! Yup that’s our boat. We’re within 80 yards of the iceberg.

(courtesy of Jim Swift) ’Guins!

Potty Mouth

FOR MATURE READERS ONLY (Skip the following post if you are not mature):

I’ve been told that I have a bit of a potty mouth. I guess I have some older and well-mannered readers who don’t much appreciate my use of naughty words... but you better get used to it because it’s the language of the future. After a while, folks will become acclimated to words we currently consider vulgar, and the vulgar language of the future will be way worse by comparison. For instance, remember how "poop" was the grossest thing ever? And then it became "crap"? Now I can say poop and crap all the time—poop, crap, poop, crap. And remember when "bitch" was a bad word, back before female dogs were discovered? And 50 years ago, people didn't even fart. Well, everyone got used to those concepts, and now they’re pleasantly incorporated into our everyday lives. It just takes time. So here I am, ahead of my time, bringing you New York Times headlines from the near future:

"Three Explosions Totally Goddamn Destroy Resort In Egypt"
"Where The Bloody Hell Is Osama Jr.?"
"Shit! 2024 Summer Olympics To Be Held In North Korea"
"President-Elect McCain Smells Like Piss, LOL"

CONCLUSION OF MATURE CONTENT

Musictarcticplaylista

My friend Peter asked that I share my current playlist... I guess there’s a little something to be learned about tastes in music. Well here it is... it’s in randomized order, because I don’t like to imply favoritism among my most-listened songs. They are all great but equal.

-- Danny Boy (Harry Connick, Jr)
-- Why Don’t You Get A Job? (The Offspring)
-- Hm! hm! hm! hm! (Mozart’s Die Zauberflote, K. 620)
-- Haven’t Got A Clue (The Flaming Lips)
-- Don’t Know Why (Norah Jones)
-- Do You Want To (Franz Ferdinand)
-- Take Me Out (Franz Ferdinand)
-- Come On Let’s Go (Los Lobos)
-- Yeah! (Usher feat. Lil’ Jon & Ludacris)
-- The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (The Flaming Lips)
-- Bye Bye Bye (N’Sync)
-- Gone Till November (Wyclef Jean)
-- The Ring Goes South (The Lord of the Rings soundtrack)
-- Let Me Tell You About My Boat (The Life Aquatic soundtrack)
-- Float On (Modest Mouse)
-- Sweetest Thing (U2)
-- Amazed (Lonestar)
-- A Whole New World (Aladdin soundtrack)
-- What a Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong)
-- Until the End of the World (U2)
-- Vertigo (U2)
-- Ice Ice Baby (Vanilla Ice)
-- Frozen (Madonna)
-- Numb (U2)
-- Unwell (Matchbox 20)
-- The Lonely Goatherd (The Sound of Music)
-- Show Me The Meaning of Being Lonely (The Backstreet Boys)
-- Help! (The Beatles)
-- Crazy (Britney Spears)
-- All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow)
-- Get Back (The Beatles)

Anyway that’s the music I’ve been listening to! I’m having a great time. I hear we’re approaching some rough water soon, with 45 knot winds. Not quite a ‘storm’ but should be entertaining!

A thought I had

The moment they wake up, I'd say about 80% of all people ask themselves, "What the hell is going on?" Well, I'll tell you what's going on: crazy things!

Lesson #1

The last time I wrote, I said I’d go into some of the particulars about research on the cruise. Well, after talking to Chris Measures of the Trace Metals team (and the University of Hawaii), I thought it’d be worth summarizing a conversation we had about something called the Gaia theory.

I’ll start from the basics: Captain Planet. Captain Planet, as you may or may not remember, was a nineties cartoon superhero powered by the combination of Earth, Fire, Water, Air, and Heart. He saved the world every Saturday morning, usually from the threat of ugly, fat adults. The Captain’s kryptonite was pollution, so plots usually centered on a group of five kids hosing slime off the Captain so he could get his powers back. Well, another less-well-remembered-but-interesting aspect of the cartoon was Gaia, the beautiful blue-green lady who hired Captain Planet in the first place. Actually I don’t remember what colors she was, but she was definitely pretty! Her name was a reference to the Greek goddess of the Earth, and also to Lovelock’s Gaia theory of the 1970s.

The Gaia theory was a popular theory that said the world is a vast, self-regulating organism: that nature is completely in harmony, and when something goes a bit out of whack (ex. global temperature goes up), then natural feedback loops correct the problem (ex. an ice age). The main concept was that a moralistic higher power oversaw the natural balance. It’s a pleasant theory, but has frequently been discredited as even more ridiculous than Captain Planet.

I mentioned this in an earlier post, but phytoplankton in the ocean have a large impact on carbon dioxide levels (by photosynthesis) in the ocean and thus the atmosphere, as limited by the amount of nutrients and micronutrients (such as iron) in the ocean. Well, iron is crucial to the respiratory processes of many living things. What’s interesting is that the oceans are relatively iron-deficient; it’s generally provided from dust blowing off continents and from the minerals in continental shelves. But there’s generally a lot more demand for iron than supply. So why do the phytoplankton have such a thirst for iron, when there’s not that much around? The answer is that there used to be a lot of iron, and that the plants originally evolved in an environment abundant with iron.

Iron has two oxidation states: a low-oxidation state and a high-oxidation state. The former is very soluble, the latter not. Only soluble iron is biologically useful. There used to be a lot of low-oxidized iron in the environment, and not a lot of oxygen: the world was anoxic back in the day. Well, then came the phytoplankton, which burned up tons of iron and converted tons of CO2 into oxygen, and by doing so created an oxygen-rich atmosphere. While humans would eventually appreciate this change, this process caused several planet-wide crises because all the surface iron reacted with the abundant oxygen into a high-oxidation state, which subsequently meant a lack of available, soluble iron for living things. This punches a hole in the Gaea theory: the phytoplankton wiped out the balance that had been in place in the anoxic world. Life changed in a big way, and hasn’t really returned to that original state. Was this a good thing? A bad thing? It’s not really for us to say.

Now this is not to say that negative feedback loops do not exist in nature. There’s an interesting one that came up a few years ago: when the sun strikes the ocean surface more (ie under warming conditions), the phytoplankton—being excited by ultraviolet light—release DMSP, which is a precursor to dimethyl sulfide (DMS). Dimethyl sulfide is related to cloud formation, which of course begins a cooling process by reflecting light and causing rain.

Actually, one of the main blocks to understanding climate are the clouds. You know how weather forecasters are always trying to tell you what to expect, and how they’re often wrong? Well, the fact is, no one really knows all that much about cloud formation. We know the basic concept: evaporation of water, or something, but they’re still a mystery. And they’re a key link: understanding clouds would tell us more about weather patterns, rainfall, and also about the amount of sunlight that’s getting through and warming the surface of the earth and the oceans. It’s all connected. It’s not necessarily in service of some all powerful Gaia force, or any other higher power; there’s no good or bad attached to these processes. They just are.

The Southern Ocean Thus Far (in photos)

Sorry this took a while... it's quite challenging uploading this quantity of photos from our spotty satellite link. All but 3 of these are stills from video footage... I'm putting together video clips, but I'll have to upload them later when we've got better satellite connectivity. Anyway, enjoy:

It snowed on my last night at school.

One of my favorite views of Cambridge.

Winter in the northern hemisphere...

... is summer in the southern.

Driving on the left side of the road is dangerous, pretentious, stupid, and fun!

Point your camera at practically anything in New Zealand and you get a masterpiece.

The New Zealand flag on the topmast of the R/V Roger Revelle.

Capt. Dave Murline giving a safety briefing to the scientists.

Loading took a few days.

Etc.

All aboard! Cast off the lines! Anchors aweigh!

Adventure!

A last glimpse of land.

Just doin' my job before it gets too windy... recording 'room tone' for background noise.

They're tossing an XBT into the ocean (explained below). The ocean is much rougher here in the 40s.

The ship's rolling and pitching, it's cold and windy, the deck's wet, but...

Overexposed, whoops! It's snowing anyway.

What's able-bodied seaman Joe on the lookout for?

Icebergs! AHh!!! This one looks like Moby Dick.

Some are bigger than others. This one's the size of Muskogee, Oklahoma.

There are endless shades of grey south of 60 degrees. Also, the water is fairly calm there, since it's south of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Infinite fetch does not apply.

Let's not forget the scientists... that's George with his alkalinity setup.

The Ocean Data Facility group.

Chris Measures describes the trace metals program; did you know that the amount of iron in the ocean is closely related to the amount of CO2 in the air? It's because phytoplankton need it for photosynthesis (they eat CO2 and poop oxygen with an iron pathway).

JJ and Gene explain the XBT (eXpendable Bathy-Thermograph). It measures temperature and salinity at various depths; the data are used to calibrate the multibeam sonar, which maps the ocean floor. They toss one of these suckers overboard every day.

The yellow thing is an Argo float, which is an autonomous set of sensors that can dive to 2000m, collect data, and transmit via satellite. It's revolutionizing hydrographic data acquisition. The flying thing is a petrel, which looks suspiciously like a flying penguin.

Joe, the second mate, showing off his tattoos. The continent is just off the port side (not visible), and a freezing wind is blowing like crazy. Crazy cold.

Dave, my bunkmate, is a particularly photogenic grad student. He's wearing a Mustang suit, which are toasty bright-orange survival suits for deck work.

This is the first official CTD rosette cast.

CTD casts take a few hours to complete, since it descends thousands of meters and on the way up has to stop periodically to collect water. The sun set while we waited for the first cast to complete... we waited for an effect called a 'green flash,' which is supposed to occur right when the sun hits the horizon, but we didn't see one that day.

The trace metal team has their own rosette for sampling; they have different contamination concerns than the carbon studies group.

This is about as dark as it ever gets this far south... the sun slips under the horizon, slides along for a few hours, then pops back up. Auroras are still visible if you look hard enough.

Captain Dave fishing for Antarctic Toothfish (aka Chilean Sea Bass). He didn't catch anything but he still had fun!

It's cold and colorless here, but there are signs of life (aside from the abundant phytoplankton in every photo of the ocean here).

This was the most charismatic seal I've ever seen in my entire life, and I've seen five.

Sunset is my favorite. I hear dawn's a real eye-catcher, but every time I wake up early for it, it's super cloudy. One of these days...

The Shape of the Iceberg at left reminded me of my favorite building in Cambridge.