It finally made its way back to the sun from the cold darkness below. The dance begins as anxious teams of samplers crowd the door holding bottles, boxes, hoses, syringes, and chemicals, all waiting their turn. Busy bumblebees that will extract the precious nectar of the blooming flower with their proboscides.
This is what we came for, water samples at different locations and different depths
It all seems chaotic; up to twelve samplers crowd the rosette, each at their own spigot. The chaos is well organize by the 'samplecup', whose job is to enforce the pecking order among the bumblebees. Those who require the most pristine water go first; those whose measurements are unaffected by air will go last.
A crowded rosette as people sample from the rosette
The sampling cup makes sure sampling occurs in the right order
The waltz begins aided by the boat's swings. They all wear gloves to prevent contamination; they talk and joke as they go. CFCs, the industrial gases most responsible for the depletion of ozone in the higher atmosphere, which we no longer produce, go first; their measurements are so delicate that it is not enough to cap the bottle, a water seal also helps.
Sarah sampling for CFC. The sample bottle is inside the black container, which is used for having a water seal.
Helium goes second. Its measurer is responsible for providing the rhythm to the ritual by banging the strange looking metal containers used in the sampling with a piece of wood to remove bubbles of air.
Strange looking metal devices for sampling and analyzing helium in water.
Then follow oxygen, dissolved inorganic carbon, pH to measure acidity, alkalinity, carbon -14, dissolve organic carbon, tritium, oxygen-18, nutrients and salts.
I am sampling for Carbon-14
The amounts of tritium measured in the ocean are so low that we cannot even wear glow in the dark watches because they contain enough tritium that could corrupt the measurements.
No glow in the dark watches around tritium measurements.
Some samples require the use of chemicals for fixing the compounds that we want to measure, so they do not change in the bottle. The measurement of carbon-14, for example, uses chemicals to kill any living organisms that could change the carbon distribution in the water.
Alex adds chemicals for fixing the oxygen in the samples
The bumblebees leave the rosette exhausted and empty. They all go back to their holes with the stolen treasure from the dark depths. Not much time for rest, the flower is getting ready for a new bloom and soon the bumblebees will return.
And by the way, we restarted rosette deployments at 1:30 am after two days of weather delays. Everybody seems more cheerful now that we are back in science. My stomach also thanks the calmer seas.