Life Aboard the Ronald H. Brown

Saturday, January 18, 2014

For this installment of my blog I have continued to make use of other's literary skills - this time Jonathan Christophersen, a Ph.D. student at Florida State University. I asked Jon to write a short piece about his role on the cruise, and what it felt like to participate in his first research cruise, so, over to Jon:

16:00 on 17^th of January, 2014:  My name is Jonathan Christophersen, a Ph.D. student in the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Institute at FSU. Being my first adventure at sea I have been asked to write a blog about life on the Ronald H. Brown and my personal experience and feelings about life on a boat for 45 days.

As mentioned in previous blog postings, we kicked off the cruise from Recife, Brazil, at 05:00 on the 23^rd of December. Traveling at roughly 10 knots, it took a couple of days to reach our first destination of 25^o W 6^o S - literally the middle of the ocean. From there we began our task of sampling at total of 115 stations, from 6 - 60^o S.

This cruise is important for the monitoring of CO₂ increase within the ocean due to human effects. The ocean is a major player in the earth's climate system. Basically, it acts as a reservoir for not just heat and energy, but also CO₂ , as well as other chemical constituents. So by measuring the carbon dioxide levels every ten years we can get a good picture as to how the CO₂ is changing on decadal time scales.

I have to admit, it's the experience of a lifetime. Of course, when I first heard of this opportunity, it conjured up ideas of centuries past, of Magellan and Columbus battling the raging seas. In reality, we have relatively comfortable living quarters with showers and bunks, good food prepared by a knowledgeable team of cooks, and most importantly, a crew that maintains the ship and keeps us safe while we, the scientists, perform the daily routine of deploying the conductivity, temperature, and depth (CTD) package, along with bottles that capture water at various pressure levels within the ocean for sampling.

Basically, life is simple on the Ronald H. Brown. Shifts vary in time slots, but scientists and crew are on twelve-hour shifts. That gives you opportunities to have some down time and a decent night (or day's) sleep. You are wise to get into a routine so that the days don't linger ever onward. Being a 45-day cruise, you do tend to get a bit restless. However, on the Ronald H. Brown you can hit the gym for a nice workout to let the cabin fever subside. And personally, I do recommend you do just that.



Jon at work watching the output of the main CTD package

All in all, I have had a fun and interesting time on the Brown. The crew and other scientists have been most welcoming to a newcomer such as myself. Also, and maybe most importantly, we're doing something meaningful and interesting out here on the open water. It's not all fun and games, and in reality the romanticized vision of life at sea and traveling to exotic destinations fades away after a long stint at sea because it can be hard work. After all, it's science! But at the end of the day you feel rewarded for contributing to something bigger than yourself.

The main CTD package going into the water

This CTD system has several differences from the trace metal one: it is bigger (24 bottles, compared to 12), the water sampling bottles are Niskin rather than GO-FLOs (that have been modified for trace metal work - i.e. metal components reduced to an absolute minimum). This system also has a much longer wire - the maximum depth this system has been deployed to on this cruise is close to 6,000 m depth - that's about 18,000 ft - but we don't use the confusing (well, confusing to non-American's!) imperial system of measurement, as the internationally-accepted units used in science (SI units) are metric units - that is meters for distance, and Celsius for temperature. The abbreviation SI stands for "Système International d'units'; a French phrase meaning International System of Units. In English we simply say "System International'. With everyone using the same units a good deal of confusion is saved!