Day One Aboard r/v Kilo Moana

2 September 2010


6:44 pm HST

Aloha!

This has been an exciting day, packed with a lot of information. I am learning r/v Kilo Moana’s day to day policies and procedures on top of all of the science. One of the first things we did when we were all on board was to do safety trainings. We donned life jackets and immersion suits so we would be prepared in case of an emergency. We learned what to do if we needed to abandon ship, also.  As we were heading out of port, two common dolphins were swimming in front of the hull of the boat. One dolphin kept spinning and spinning, then would jump out of the water. Quite a sight to see!

Common Dolphin

Mrs. Spink trying on the immersion suit.

I learned a lot more about the CTD (Conductivity Temperature Depth) rosette and how it collects samples. The deployment of the CTD took a concentrated effort of a team of crew and scientists to get it safely into the water.  The CTD was comprised of twenty four Niskin bottles that took water samples from a depth of 5 meters to 1000 meters.  The scientists then took samples from these bottles to do their analysis.  Temperature, dissolved oxygen, nutrients and chlorophyll are some of the parameters measured.  The STARS teachers even did their own Niskin bottle deployment and we have started chlorophyll size fractionation where we filtered our sample water over increasingly finer filters.

CTD deployment

One of the best perks of the ship is the food. Believe me, we are eating well! It has been a full day and we still have meetings tonight to learn more about the HOT-series and the data that is being collected.

A hui hou.

Mrs. Spink