Egret regrets.

7pm Wednesday 20th, station 11 South of the Falklands

Well hello again! Things have been super busy. As we came down the continental slope we had lots of sampling stations really close together so we still have a huge backlog of samples to run through and are still collecting more. The CTD has a rosette of 24 big bottles which get opened at different depths to collect samples. When it gets up on deck we need to fill up big 2 L glass bottles from the CTD (there is a rather lengthy technique to avoid any contamination). This whole process takes a while and involves kneeling in freezing water on the deck and having freezing cold water running over your hands for a while. So I have some rather fetching X4s which are big orange padded dungarees and coat. Plus my fur lined steel toe-cap wellies and bright yellow hard hat and I am basically the height of fashion!

So at each station we take samples from each of the bottles on the CTD and then several duplicates. We put the samples into big cool boxes filled with cold water and ice packs. We then have to move the cool boxes to another part of the deck and strap them down and take empty sample bottles back to the CTD area. We then run as many of the samples through the machine as we can before the next station. Running samples is fairly similar to what I described earlier with all the computers but you have to change bottles round, press valves at key moments and top up the liquid nitrogen. Luckily the computer makes silly noises when you have to do these things ('woof-woof' means change the sample)! But it takes a lot of concentration. I seriously hate having to do the liquid nitrogen. Pouring it from a big urn into a little trap on a moving ship is horrible, and then when you need to top up the urn it involves crossing the deck climbing over some barriers and through a couple of doors.... when you need two hands for the nitrogen and the ship is rolling.... totally shit. But no accidents yet! :P

I getting on well being on shift with Andy.... though I am even more convinced about what a 'big-picture' guy he is! He keeps forgetting the little details.... which can be pretty nerve wrecking because if you miss key stages everything might go boom! So mostly I run the machine and the sampling and let him get on with data analysis and being an important professor! Poor Ben is on the midnight to 8am shift. He has not managed to figure out his sleeping pattern yet and was a total mess when I came in this morning! But we usually manage to have a cuppa in the evening and the occasional game of darts (I think I am not actually much worse despite the heaving deck!). Unlike Andy most bigwigs stop coming on cruises as soon as they can so it is a pretty young crowd on this ship so no one is too jaded yet! Its quite social and chilled on the ship which is really nice.


The sea is rougher now. It has been really foggy today which has disrupted some of the other science done aboard. I think people have found it pretty frustrating just sitting around. There is a fair swell at the moment... and a swell of 10 meters forecast for tomorrow evening!!!! And Saturady is meant to be worse. Eeep! Luckily I am not feeling at all sick (well beyond the usual coeliac background) Gwen is feeling it a bit but no one is really too bad. Which is great! Fingers crossed it lasts through the bad weather! If it is like that then we probably won't be able to sample... but we won't be able to sleep either! I slept pretty badly last night. I kept trying to sleep on my side and then tumbling over as the ship rolled and waking up! I'll get used to sleeping on back soon though! And I have made sure nothing is loose in any of the drawers so we are not kept up with things rattling about the place!


What has been breaking my heart is that there is a wee flock of snowy egrets (though without the tuft?) which are following the ship. They turned up yesterday and must have been lost. They seem to be really struggling flying by the ship in the day and roosting on the deck at night. They are absolutely beautiful birds. It is heartbreaking because they will all die soon without fresh water etc. Apparently the local birds mob them too. Which seems unfair since the albatrosses/ shearwaters following the ship are sooooooo much bigger! Still amazed by that!

So I had better go as there is CTD coming up now. Although I am on ship between 8am-4pm I help out if there is a CTD any time I am awake. But usually I go for being the clipboard person and oversee rather than actually getting too chilled.


Written 10.30pm

Just finfished the aforementioned CTD. It took a while but I quite like doing them at night as everything seems quiter and calmer. The swell was coming right up by the deck in big walls, and with all the lights on deck for sampling it looks like thick blue paint. Its not breaking over the side but sometimes it looks like a vertical wall above you. Pretty scary. But also amazing.

The poor wee egrets were all flying around in the lights desparetly trying to land somewhere and soon getting blown off. For a while they were all on top of the container lab. Unfortunately my camera was not to hand as it would have made a great photo! They are very beautiful in flight and all ruffled and hunched when perched. They have silly long legs that kind of wave about when they fly. Completely the wrong shape for here. Going to be really sad when they are gone.

One thing that is pretty rubbish about a late station is that I am now pretty wired from being on deck and lugging things about. But got to be up early so need to sleep. So I had better go and try!

Love to you all! x x x x x x x