Blogs

In the morning Joe Needoba and Tawnya Peterson picked us up and we went to the DoSE campus of OHSU to pack all our boxes, crates, incubators, etc. into a box truck.  We then climbed into a rented passenger van and caravanned the 2.5 hours to Newport.   Research teams from four campuses (UMCES, OHSU, OSU, UW) assembled on the dock and loaded everything onto the ship. Two US Coast Guard interns also came aboard for marine technician training.

I am aboard the R/V Forerunner with the field team from Astoria. Katie Rathmell is leading us on a mission to launch the underwater glider in the ocean. We will cross the Columbia Bar and head out into the Pacific Ocean. There we plan to run two 30 minute tests to ensure all systems are operating properly.

Just to catch everyone up, here are my daily blogs.  On May 10th, Mothers Day, I said goodbye to my wife and kids, and left my house at 8:30 am to begin a long day of travel to Portland, OR. I remembered my frozen DNA extraction buffer and enzymes (thank heavens), shoving them deep into my suitcase. I picked up my technician Erica Kiss and drove 1.5 h to Baltimore/Washington international where we caught a flight to Portland via Houston.

Ran up to the Opal Creek pool area to grab a water sample for CDOM testing.

CMOP scientists test out a new autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) in the North Channel of the Columbia River estuary. The science team will use the AUV to study the physics of internal waves and mixing near the sea surface and the sea floor.

Craig McNeil, APL-UW oceanographer, is the leader of the AUV mission.

Are you confused on what kind of research projects are going on at CMOP?

Have you struggled to find data on our web site?

Well you are in luck!

We have began a project to improve the web navigation for research & data areas and better communicate the research centers programs & projects on the web.

It would be great to hear your comments or suggestions.

Last week, I had the opportunity to give two talks in Indianapolis: one at the IEEE eScience 2008 conference, and another at the co-located Microsoft eScience Workshop.

All the presentations were recorded and will soon be available online.

The event brought together a very diverse community, but managed to remain remarkably focused on the core research: new platforms for data-intensive science.

Key themes

Our expert crew on the Bridge will keep us out of harm's way, avoiding big ships like these.

We begin a Columbia River entrance 25-hour time series transect, right across the maw. The southern end of the transect crosses the major shipping lanes feeding into the Columbia. Shown here on our navigation display is the R/V Wecoma about to cross the shipping lanes.