The R/V Armstrong and her crew are no less than what I remember them to be from my last experience onboard two years ago for the first ADEON cruise: professional, timely, respectful, and wonderful. I am excited to be back for ADEON 4.0.
We kicked off from shore precisely at 8:30AM, as scheduled yesterday morning. Our first stop would be the Virginia site, but not until more than 24 hours after departing. Those of us uncertain about seasickness, or certain we would be, scurried to take some seasickness meds as we would be skirting around a storm system sitting in our path to Virginia. To be productive with our time we had several meetings with the science party as well as the crew, making sure everyone understood how to do the tasks they were expected to perform. As an example this morning, we will be getting a tutorial from SSG (Scientific Support Group, or as we are renaming them: Scientific Support Guardians) Amy on how to operate the CTD, or Conductivity Temperature Depth sensor. This is an important instrument for understanding the physical conditions of the ocean environment for which we are trying to understand the biology. Last night, Chief Scientist Joe gave us a tutorial on how to interpret the water column data from the EK 80’s. Basically the EK 80’s are our eyes into the water column, which allow us to “see”, with acoustics, the different layers and size classes of plankton and zooplankton between us and the seafloor.
Some of the other highlights during this first transit have been cheese-thirty or 2:30PM snack time. Yesterday this was 5 different types of cheese, green olives, two types of warm homemade bread, and some sliced meats. Additionally, the new Armstrong gym has been very popular with the science party so far. The last time I was aboard the gym was just (still pretty luxurious if you ask me!) a treadmill and rowing machine and a few free weights. Now it is a fully functional room with a bike, rowing machine, P90X videos, yoga videos, workout benches, weight training machines and so much more! We should have no excuse balancing our cheese intake with a solid workout.
Hilary Kates Varghese, Graduate student at the University of New Hampshire.
