Jim asked me to visit him in his lab at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) in La Jolla, California to begin the preparations for the expedition. My first impression is that I am the luckiest teacher around. Jim is not only a top notch researcher, but also a wonderful person who cares enormously for the people that works with him. He has been very kind and has taught me many things in our first meeting. I am afraid I am unable to write down all of his marvelous insights and ideas. Here are some in no particular order
Sending equipment by boat to Antarctica
All the equipment for the project, including some of our personal belongings, will travel to Antarctica by boat. The cargo ship will leave port on November 22 2010, in just three days from today. Understandably, I met Jim and his team in the middle of heavy packing, and he still devoted all day to talk with me. I thought I was distracting him with little nuances when he had greater things to do, but he made me feel that my questions and needs where very important.
Dan is loading supplies for the trip on the cargo boat.
I found amazing to learn that the boat that will take our equipment makes the trip only once a year to resupply McMurdo station and all of the scientific expeditions that will take place in that year! I cannot imagine the amount of boxes that will be in that boat. Jim said that our boxes will be just a few acorns a gigantic mountain acorns and sees the challenge of finding all of our acorns in that pile. He fears retrieving our equipment will look like the scene in the Indiana Jones movie where there are thousands of boxes to search for (sorry for the reference for those of you who never saw the movie).
I am also amaze at the planning and coordination that needs to take place for all the necessary equipment to be shipped at once. We will not have a chance to go to the corner store to buy anything that is forgotten while we are at sea, and we need to plan for the unexpected by bringing redundant back up equipment. Jim is coordinating not only our party, but all of the scientific teams and technicians that will be in the Palmer like the conductor of an orchestra.
And talking about orchestras, not everything being packed has a scientific oriented goal. Here is a picture of Jim packing his bassoon for the trip. He said his bassoon has been all over the world in the more than 30 research cruises in which he has participated! I look forward to hearing him play the instrument at sea.
Jim, and accomplished bassoonists, packing his instrument for the trip
Fitting fowl weather clothing
I got fitted with the steel toe boots, and rubber pants and jacket that I will be using while sampling water. I am glad I am sending them in the boat and not carrying them with my personal luggage to McMurdo. We can only take 68 kg of personal gear on the flight from Christchurch to McMurdo, so sending this gear will help.
By the way, I am also sending by boat all the decorated cups that students in my school district laboriously worked on. I almost lost them on the taxi from the airport to my hotel in San Diego, as the driver kept telling me I had not boarded the taxi with them. A last look on the presumedly empty van prove me right as the cardboard tube was hiding in a little nook. What a relief! I was imagining announcing to my students that the cups failed to reach Antarctica because they were lost in the airport.
Advice
Jim has an amazing number of great stories related to being at sea, and he is a great story teller. I enjoyed hearing all the excitement that takes place in a boat, about the boredom that lurks in the ship when we we do the same activity day after day for 60 or so days, and about the dangers that exist when we are not well prepared and careful while working with heavy equipment and tons of ropes. Here is the biggest advice I got from our first meeting:
- Keep busy by working hard. Too much leisure time for so long on such a small environment feeds boredom. He always takes a big project in every cruise; this time he will be preparing online materials for a textbook in Descriptive Physical Oceanography that he is co-writing. I believe I will be quite busy feeding this journal, preparing videos and pictures, and answering all of your questions. Help me out combat the boredom by asking lots of questions
Getting to know the people and equipment for the expedition
I met a few of the people with whom I will be working in the cruise and turn out to be a great experience. They were all very kind and helpful. I look forward to getting to know them better in our journey, and to learning from their great experience. I plan on asking for their advice tomorrow as I prepare for my trip.
I also saw the lab where the equipment is housed and taken care of. There is large room where the equipment is calibrated before and after every major cruise. In this lab, they are able to replicate the rough conditions for the equipment when it is sent more than 4 km below water (2 to 3 miles). In the picture you can see the fancy tools used to simulate the great pressure and low temperatures that the thermometer sensor, for example, will be exposed to under water. By comparing the reading in the sensor with a more stable thermometer they can check if the sensor is working well.
Calibrating equipment to simulate great pressures on the CTD sensors
I was impressed by the room after room of organized chaos where all sorts of tools, equipment and spare parts are housed. People where working on not only packing equipment for our trip, but for another two cruises that will soon depart to uncover some of the secrets of our oceans. Wonderful, just wonderful!
Jim's lab is full of rooms that house tons of equipment and their spare parts fro different cruises.
And there was more in my first day at SIO, but this will suffice for the moment...