Halloween

To break up the monotony of a long steam, we decided to have a Halloween party on board. This was a highly industrious affair with people fashioning outfits from all sorts of ship and scientific equipment. No costumes were purchased beforehand and all were made by hand. Crew, technician and scientists were all involved. An excellent night was had by all, as can be seen in the enthusiasm below. I'll let it to the reader at home to decide who's costume was best (vote for the shark!)..

Disco's last Haloween Dance: From left, David Axe Smeed, Rafael Zombie-Catany,  Sheets Duncan, Martin Horrorson, Long John Charlotte Mielke, Gerard Mac-the-knife-Carthy, Bengamin Mort, Mummy Alexander Clarke, Darren Bones Rayner, Jaqueline Witcherhouse and Ian Murdereroch.

An Update

Disco's last dance included many pirouettes south of the Canary Islands. Cruise track (red) south to the first mooring at EBH1, (magenta) on to Santa Cruz, (light blue) out to EB1, (dark blue) back east to EBH4, 5 and finally (black) out towards the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Believe it or not, we are halfway through the cruise. To celebrate we had an excellent Halloween party. Photos to follow. In fact, the main lab–our home for this cruise–was very quiet beforehand with most scientists diligently working away at their Halloween costumes.

So far the cruise has mainly been doing loops south of the Canary Islands (see cruise track above). We started with our moorings, called EBH1, south of Tenerife and worked in towards the African coast but were unable to reach Moroccan waters so we returned to Santa Cruz de Tenerife for repairs to the ship (magenta). Then out southwest of the Canaries (light blue) to EB1. Then, finally, back in to the Moroccan coast to finish work there (dark blue).

Westwards ever westwards from there (black). Feeling good about the trade winds being at our back and, being late in the year, little prospect of bad weather from Tropical Storms…

The last three days we have spent battling the tail end of Tropical Storm Tony. Tony, I'm putting you on my list of enemies. All this has meant we've spent the last few days pitching into short choppy seas. And losing time…

Darren asks: What time is it?

A selection of the clocks on board RRS Discovery

So after being bullied into it I'll write a post for the blog. Which is strange really, as we've recently been sent details about anti-bullying training (maybe my colleagues haven't had time to do that course yet!).

Anyway, what shall I say? How about the problems of timezones when at sea?

Things shouldn't be complicated, but with us crossing several timezones - and hence having several clock changes - as we go across the Atlantic it can get confusing when trying to keep track of the time at home relative to the ship's time. To compound matters, all scientific time recording uses GMT as the timezone.

At the start of the cruise we had two timezones to think about: the ship matched the UK and both were on British Summer Time (GMT+1), and the instruments were on GMT. Then to adjust for daylight hours the ship time was changed to match GMT - still only two timezones to worry about.

Going further west it got more complicated and ship time went back another hour, so we then had GMT-1, GMT and BST to contend with. All this can be readily resolved during the day, but when the fog of sleep is still lifting you worry that you got it wrong when setting your alarm. "Have I missed the start time for the piece of work we're doing today?" Or more importantly for some: "Have I missed breakfast?".

We've now come across a new problem, which although may be useful at home, just adds to the confusion here. Last night the UK's clock's switched from BST to GMT, and apparently so did many people's mobile phones. A mobile may be of no use to make calls when at sea, but for many of us it's our alarm clock, so when it automatically changes timezone and goes back an hour (despite all settings suggesting it shouldn't) then some people were caught out for our 05:30 start. Again the thought processes are slow in the morning and it took a good while for some to fathom why they were late. There was even an accusation made of someone changing someone else's phone time!

Me? I can just be smug that I somehow spotted the problem when setting my alarm last night.

Darren Rayner

Ben and his love of CTDs and sunshine

Ben (left) and Darren (the shy guy who hasn't written in the blog yet) enjoying themselves in temperate climes during our port call in Santa Cruz de Tenerife

I am usually found sailing into stormy seas in the high latitude North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean. The last time I sailed on Discovery the wind hardly dropped below force 10 (wind speed of about 60 mph). So this time it’s quite refreshing to pack a bag containing shorts and sun cream, rather than wooly hats, scarves and thermals. My role on this RAPID cruise is to oversea all the underway data collection and processing the CTD data. What’s a CTD?  I’m glad you asked.

A CTD is the physical oceanographers main instrument. Alex is stood next to one in a previous post. It is lowered from the ship on wire to within about 10m of the seabed and then hauled back on board. This can take a while, as the seabed is currently 5000m below us! During this journey instruments measure how the temperature and conductivity of the water varies with depth. Temperature and conductivity are used to calculate the waters salinity (or saltiness). The MicroCat instruments (picture here) on the moorings are in effect little CTDs so we attach them to the CTD and use their bigger, and slightly more accurate, brother to check that they are working correctly.

We not only check that the new MicroCat instruments going out on the new moorings are OK we also attach the ones we have recovered onto the CTD and fly them into the depths as well. As if they haven’t had enough, they have been out in the darkness all alone for a year already!

Ben Moat

What are we doing here?

Reading Rafael's post on the blog yesterday I realised that there are just two scientists who hadn't yet written anything - and I didn't want to be last.  I am David and in Gerard's classification of oceanographers (students or grizzled sea-scientists) I fall into the latter.

You will have already read that we are currently travelling between Southampton, the Canaries and the Bahamas.  You might also have thought that this sounds like the itinerary of a holiday cruise rather than a research endeavour.  So what are we doing here?

The sun heats the equatorial regions more strongly than higher latitudes and the ocean and atmosphere redistribute the heat transporting it form the tropics towards the North and South poles.  There is though a remarkable exception.  In the South Atlantic the ocean transports heat towards the equator.  As a consequence the North Atlantic transports more heat northwards and this has an important impact on the climate of northwest Europe.  The  RAPID project measures the poleward heat transport in the North Atlantic ocean.

This is my first time on a RAPID project cruise but the work has been going on since 2004.   There isn't another project like this anywhere else and the measurements we make are widely used by climate scientists.  We are really quite proud of it.

You might still be asking why measure the heat transport at the latitude of the Bahamas and not somewhere else?  There are a couple of reasons. This is the latitude at which the northward transport of heat is greatest - about 1.3 PW (1.3 quadrillion Watts).  It is also a latitude at which the Gulf Stream is constrained in the Florida Strait and that has been monitored by our colleague in Florida AOML and RSMAS for many years.

Below are some of the instruments used to monitor the ocean.   We are deploying about 170 altogether - considering the size of the ocean the number required seems surprisingly few.



David

Microcats in the Deck Lab. Microcats are instruments that measure temperature, salinity and pressure on a mooring

   

Hurricanes, ocean saltiness and me: Rafael Jaume-Catany

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Rafael with Mt. Teide in the background as we departed Tenerife

 How can I start writing about myself and introducing you my research curiosities avoiding being dull and boring. How can I describe you that at the moment I am living the opportunity of my life doing research on board of the historic RSS Discovery. I cannot count how many times I have been looking at this living legend from the canteen of the National Oceanographic Centre (NOC) and imagining one day stepping on board. I was imagining that moment would be like to connect with the history of ocean sciences.

Well, so here we are. I am writing you from the cabin number 27 of the RSS Discovery and wondering how many times scientists have been using this table facing the eye bull (round window in the cabin). Meanwhile Discovery is doing its last journey, me, Rafael E. Jaume-Catany from Sóller a little but proud village in Mallorca (Spain) I am doing my first forty-day cruise along the North Atlantic.

The task of finding my research questions is a work in progress that has been developed through my studies in marine sciences in the University of Vigo. Then in the University of Palmas de Gran Canary (Spain) and in the University of Algarve (Portugal), where I found my passion for using satellites to monitor different parameters of the oceans including ocean color to study global ocean’s productivity, sea surface temperature (SST) and the sea level. But in there my research question was still not clear and I had to cross the line and I had to go to the University of Baja California in Ensenada (Mexico) and start discovering my research interest.  There, I started to look at phytoplankton blooms induced by hurricane motion over the west Pacific. But if you are reading this and you are thinking that this is nothing new for the scientific community, then you are right. So I had to come back to Europe seeking what could be really original, useful for the society in the same time enjoyable for me..

This is how my research interest put me in contact with the satellite group at the NOC where I had the opportunity to work and to complete a master’s programme in the university of Southampton using SMOS and Aquarius, two brand new satellites from a European and American-Argentinean partnership missions. The aim of both missions is to measure the sea surface salinity (SSS) from space. Finally, this journey brought me here. During this Discovery cruise I am processing the temperature and salinity measured at five meters depth along the Discovery track from all along the way from Southampton down to the Canary Island and then to the Bahamas. This cruise is an excellent opportunity for me to see from the first hand how in situ oceanographic data are collected. We are going to deploy very exciting instruments including Argo floats, surface drifters from the SPURS project and a large number of moorings from the Rapid project.

It is an incredible experience and I am glad that my passion for science was strong enough to bring me here.

Rafael

Nemo found on top of my computer...

Figure 1: Nemo in the lab with, from left, Charlotte, Rafael, Alex and Ben.

Let me introduce another member of our team. In Figure 1 (I told you there would be science here) is our pet clownfish called Nemo. As all observationalists tend to be, I was sceptical of bringing a clownfish to sea. My scepticism was soon sidelined when I learn he speaks fluent English (though with a strong French accent). We have struck up an unlikely friendship. He informs me that he hates his name and likens its prevalence to the explosion of Kylies in the UK in the early 90's. He maintains that he was born in the mid-1950's (thus rubbishing his earlier story about the origin of his name) and can tell me anything about the ocean as he knows everything and has been everywhere. I am inclined reinstate my scepticism.

I am at a loss as to what category of sea-going scientist Nemo fits into: he is neither student (Figure 1, left & background) nor gristled sea-scientist (Figure 1, right). In fact I'm not even sure if 'he' is male or female–apparently that's a touchy subject with clownfish. Anyway, he was in need of an introduction. He apologises for not writing this entry himself but fins are not good for typing. I pointed out that he had plenty of fins but not enough gers. I don't think he got it.

The reason he looks so unhappy in the picture is because we've had an unexpected stop in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and he is not allowed up the road. As we approached Santa Cruz, a rainbow split the sky. The rocky peaks of Teneriffe were swaddled in mists. The whole sight was rather wonderful. Personally, I'll be happier seeing this view from the aft deck in a few days time…

Santa Cruz de Tenerife