Saturday, November 23, 2013

We're in business!

Wind Speed (kn):        22.1
Wind Direction (True):  338.2
Air Temperature (C):    1.0
Wind Chill (C): -14.5
Sea Temperature (C):    0.5
Heading (deg T):        186.9
Course Made Good (deg): 190.8
Speed (kn):     10.1
Latitude: -61.6813   Longitude: -65.5576
Next Waypoint: camera crab survey site
Distance (nm):  137.5
Travel Time (hrs):      13.3



This morning we passed the Chilean EEZ, or Economic Exclusion Zone. Since we do not have a Chilean observer on board, we cannot do any science in Chilean waters and had to wait until early this morning to turn on our underway water sampling and sensor system. After this the Phantastic team didn’t waste any time and started hooking up equipment. We’re very excited to measure the first concentrations of gasses in the water and study the phytoplankton of the Drake Passage under the microscope and with the fancy new camera/microscope system we have, the Flowcam. Right now it’s still mainly tweaking and everything is looking good so far.
We are not far away from the Antarctic Peninsula, where the crab team will start looking for crabs on the slope of the Antarctic shelftomorrow. They will deploy a towed camera on a sled that can take photos from the sea floor to see if crabs are present. If they see some they will deploy crab traps to try to catch them. Everyone on the ship got to make a guess of how many they will catch and the numbers run from 7 4/5th to 685. We will see in a week!



Above: Casey and Laughlin are inspecting the Mass spec

Below: Hannah and Gert got the Flowcam to take pictures of phytoplankton

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