17 June -a very good day

Wednesday, June 17th 2009: Rockall Trough

By Natalie Wager, MSc Student Marine Resource Development and Protection: Heriot-Watt University.


Today is a very good day.  The sun is shining and the queasy feeling which I suffered earlier on in the week has disappeared...I think I have found my sea-legs!  After many initial complications, including Benton and Carter (Gas Chromotography machines) suffering from sea sickness (tackled with Andys GC expertise, along with with a big piece of ginger placed on top of the machines - apparently good for sea-sickness) everything seems to be flowing well (knock on wood), and nice curves are being observed from our results.  Brilliant!!!

Please let the rest of the cruise run as smoothly as the last few days!  Myself and Andy have established good team working skills to complete our experiments each day.  Today I am measuring the DMS Lyase activity.  I collected three 1 litre bottles of seawater, filtered to remove zooplankton from the samples.  The bottles are then filtered again to collect phytoplankton, along with their bacterial associates.  The filter papers from these filtrations are placed into glass vials, soaked in 4ml of buffer solution and crimped to make them air tight.  DMSP is added and then the rate at which the DMSP is converted into DMS is measured using head space gas chromotography.  To perform head space analysis a set quantity of the gases produced from the vials are extracted using a syringe and injected into the prep system where they are allowed to purge for a short period of time before being injected into Carter.  During this purge any DMS from the extracted gas will collect in a loop which has been placed in liquid Nitrogen to keep it at around -150 degrees centigrade.  The loop is placed into freshly boiled water converting the contents into a gas, allowing it to flow into the machine to be measured.  Further experiments which we have been doing I will leave for Andy to explain to you all tomorrow. 

I feel very settled on the ship, the food is amazing - I think I've eaten more meat in the last week then in the the last half year, yummy! Everyone is getting on very well.  During the day people in my lab are busy running experiments, and at night most are in the lounge playing cards.  Some unlucky ones are having to sample during the night, but luckily myself I have only had one late night in the lab so far.  Sleeping is amazing as you are rocked to sleep...but we have been very lucky in terms of weather so far, I have been warned it may not be quite so relaxing if we were to hit a storm (fingers crossed for continued good weather).  We seem to have avoided yesterdays 'bad weather warning' although it did get rather choppy last night whilst I was in the lab- this makes it quite challenging when you are trying to inject a sample into a small lid and keep being thrown around the boat.  It is funny to watch other people trying to walk from one side of the lab to the other as the Discovery hits a swell, they look like they've had a pint too many.  The bridge and the monkey island (top of the boat) has amazing views.  When the CTD goes down and we are pretty stationary it is amazing to be up there as all you can see is the Discovery and ocean surrounding you.  I have seen some beautiful sunsets on the ship and yesterday there were two whale sightings.  This is my first cruise and the experience so far makes me want to go on many more in the future.


Picture : Sampling the ocean 17.06.09
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