17 June - Sun is back!

Wednesday, June 17th 2009: Rockall Trough

By Victoire Rerolle, MSc Student Marine in Oceanography at the University of Southampton.


Sun is back!
After a raining and wavy day yesterday, the weather is nice again. Which is very good as we have some time to do sunbathing: CTD casts are interrupted to replace the cable by a new one (which may take 8 hours). Then, people enjoy this time to recover from a tiring night of sampling, use it to catch up with their work or play cards to kill time.

I am doing a MSc in Oceanography in Southampton and this cruise is part of my MSc Research Project on the carbonate chemistry in the North-Atlantic. The carbonate system is a key component of the chemical perspective of oceanography as it plays an important role in the oceans’ capacity to take up atmospheric CO2. This is important as raising levels of atmospheric CO2 are of big concern. Dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) is present in seawater in three forms (CO2aq, HCO3- and CO32-) which are in equilibrium on timescale longer than a few minutes. In oceanography, the carbonate system can be determined by four parameters: DIC, carbon dioxide partial pressure (pCO2), alkalinity and pH. My aim is to determine the carbonate chemistry through DIC, alkalinity and pH. I am also measuring particulate inorganic carbon (PIC).
This is my first cruise and I really enjoy it: atmosphere is good and it is interesting to see how a scientific cruise is organized. Organization has been my main problem at the beginning and I ended up sleeping two hours per two hours to catch up: as I want to relate my data to biological and physical processes I need to follow who is sampling when, which was a bit messy at the beginning. But now it is settled and I have time to enjoy the social life of the ship, which is not really easy as everybody has a different rhythm: main moments are dinner time (really good food by the way, cheers to the cooks!) and cheathead games (quite funny card game).

Sur ce, à la prochaine!
Victoire Rerolle.

Picture : Victoire Rerolle and view of the ship from the Monkey Island