Blogs

Well, today was my first day back from the Barnes cruise. Work picked right back up where I left it (with plenty of samples to analyze on the Fluoromax 4) and it almost feels like I never spent two weeks on a retired icebreaker traveling up and down the Columbia River.

Tawnya drove Jami, Joe, Florian and me to Astoria on the 15th

Today we are following patches of water with a drifter. This unique looking piece of equipment has a blue cylindrical shape, red wings, orange floats, and electronic sensors. The chief scientist, Byron Crump, explains the scientific purpose of the drifter.

Today we set out to collect water samples with no particles at a range of salinities in the North Channel of the Estuary. We did the same thing in the South Channel on July 19th. At the same time the R/V Barnes was positioned in the ETM region of the North Channel collecting ETM samples. We spent most of the day moving between stations NC-7, 9, and 11. Most water samples were collected at a middle depth above the influence of ETM particles. We collected water at the following salinities: 2, 6.5, 10, 18, 26, and 31.

Overnight last night we anchored in the North Channel near the Saturn 01 station and cast the CTD hourly until the morning. We then moved to the south channel to begin a day of CTD casts with the goal of following a specific salinity bottom water (~15), up and down the estuary. We were guided by Joseph Zhang at OHSU who provided way points and times. For most of our casts the surface water was saltier than predicted, and the bottom water was fresher than predicted, suggesting that the forecast model is not capturing the degree of water column mixing.

We left the dock this morning at 5:30 am and headed down estuary to our first sampling station. Our goal today was to collect water samples at a range of salinities and make sure those samples do not have a lot of particles in them. This estuary has very strong Estuarine Turbidity Maxima (ETM) in its north and south channels. ETM are hydrodynamic phenomena in which river-borne particles are trapped and concentrated in the estuary as the freshwater moves through. These particles are resuspended by the tides and settle back to the bed during slack tides.

Every week, since week 4 has been spent repeating the protein fractionation protocol for each sample, so as to separate out the proteins found in various areas of the cell (ie outer membrane, soluble proteins, inner membrane, and outer membrane washed proteins). Unfortunately, I only made it through the initial stages of protein fractionation on week 5 before I got sick. I went home on Wednesday afternoon and did not come back for the next week! It is now Wednesday of the 7th week and I am back in the lab at CMOP!

We are pulling anchor and will be heading west into the plume. I was wondering how many crew members does it take to raise an anchor? I wasn't sure. So I documented the process and was amazed at the team effort it took to between the wheel house and the men on the deck.

I am attending a C-MORE/MBARI EARTH Workshop this week. Everything is going well. All is very interesting and wonderful to meet such enthusiastic people. There are teachers here who have been to workshops for several years and those new like me. There are people from all over, including SMILE at OSU, Texas, Woodshole, North Carolina, Pittsburg, LA, etc.

Time is racing by--in some ways, it's almost a good thing I came back from the cruise because I have so much work to do here in the lab before I leave at the end of the summer.