Today was my first time getting to officially work with a team of scientists. I was working with the team my roommate, Nancy Kachel, belongs to from the NOAA-PMEL unit. Her husband, David Kachel, is also part of the team during the midnight to noon shift. So I got up this morning and joined her for a few hours before her shift was done and she was off for bed. There wasn't much going on because no CTD was cast at this particular station. The CTD was still being used as an anchor for the iron testing devices that are fitted to the cable. (more on that in the coming days)
The counterparts to the Kachels are Dylan Righi and Ned Cokelet that work a noon to midnight shift. When the ship is moving, there isn't much to do except get the water out of the bottles from the various depths for analyzing. With all this talk about a CTD, let me explain it better to you.
After the CTD returns from the water, Dylan Righi obtains a sample from the bottom water at a recent station.
CTD is an acronym for the three basic parameters it must test for which is conductivity (gives the salinity), temperature, and depth. This CTD also takes dissolved oxygen measurements, fluorescence (chlorophyll amounts) and basically the clarity of the water. The device consists of a round frame with 24 Niskin bottles arranged in a rosette pattern. After being lowered into the water, each bottle can be individually closed by pressing a button on the ship and getting a water sample from a certain desired depth. Scott Hiller and Parisa Nahavandi are the brains behind the programming and functioning of the CTD.
Scott Hiller looks over the data being collected by the CTD.
Before a CTD is lowered into the water, decisions must be made about when to collect water which is based on depth and how many should be collected. This takes the entire science research team to communicate with the CTD group because many of their analysis requires water from certain depths.
Ned Cokelet and Dylan Righi review the scientist's event log to determine how many water samples are needed and at what depths. ?