Anchors Aweigh!

We’ve made it to the tropics, landing in Barbados Thursday afternoon. After stepping out into the sweltering heat, we took a terrifying cab ride to our hotel. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing by the beach, and sleeping off our jet lag. That evening, some of the hotel employees came found us on the beach, and brought us to some newly hatched turtles. The turtles, confused by the hotel lights, were crawling away from the ocean. We helped the employees collect the turtles, to be brought to a more remote beach, and released.

The next two days went by as a blur, unpacking all of our gear, and setting up our lab space (often followed by rearranging many times). Finally, at 16:00 Saturday, we sailed out. After relaxing on the bow, many of us went right back to the labs to finish moving our gear.

After the long days prepping the boat, we’ve finally begun the real work. We came on station about 200 miles south of Barbados at about noon Sunday. The CTD rosette was deployed to 1000 meters (as a test, usually we’ll only sample to 200 m). Our lab took samples for dissolved organic matter, essential for phytoplankton growth; and biogenic silica, which diatoms need for growth. Both samples were brought into the lab to filter, for the BSi we collect the matter that remains on the filter, and for DOM we keep the filtered water. We’ll collect the rest of our samples tomorrow morning, when we send out another CTD cast.