exploration at sea

Most work has not been possible today, due to a problem with the cable that the CTD is lowered on. Thanks to some hard graft from the ship’s engineers, it looks to be repaired now and we hope to be back at work tomorrow morning early.

…

The last few days have seen fairly high winds and big waves (see photos). Some stops for water sampling have had to be cancelled because it has been too dangerous to lower the CTD into the water.

Portholes have had to be screwed down, rims be added around the dinner tables to stop plates sliding off, all unsecured items be stowed away, and doors to…

Almost two weeks are gone

The first time I went on board the RRS Discovery I was disorientated and a bit worried about the life on board a ship. Some people were working to take on all the research equipment, there were boxes everywhere and the ship seemed to be a labyrinth!

Our blog entry today has a…

Today our routine of collecting scientific samples has been interrupted by the arrival of the predicted rough weather. We are now heading out towards the deep Atlantic, roughly at the location shown by the red dot on the cruise map.

…

Coccolithophore blooms, almost

Today’s blog entry is written by Jeremy Young, University College London

…

On the cruise so far we have already seen large differences in the dominant phytoplankton present in different places. In just the last three days we have seen some places where diatoms dominated, others where coccolithophores dominated, and another where dinoflagellates were the most numerous group (see photograph of a rather beautiful dinoflagellate).…

Yesterday evening and today we have enjoyed sunny weather and calm seas, as shown in the photos. Those who were feeling a bit queasy earlier in the trip are now feeling much better. However, we are forecast to be heading into rough weather later in the week, when we will be visiting the most southerly weather forecast areas, Fitzroy and Biscay.

…

Today’s blog is written by the two other people responsible for measuring seawater carbon chemistry: Cynthia Dumousseaud and Victoire Rerolle from the National Oceanography Centre Southampton.

…

We will return to yesterday’s theme – carbon chemistry of seawater – tomorrow, but today’s blog is about pteropods.

The exciting event today was a chance finding of pteropods in one of the CTD water sampling bottles. When we were filtering the seawater (straining it through an extremely fine mesh to see what microscopic particles it contains), one…

A fundamental prerequisite for ocean acidification work is to accurately measure seawater pH and carbon chemistry. The basic objective of ocean acidification research is to work out the impact of inputting extra carbon dioxide into seawater.

We want to establish the effect of these chemical changes on life and other aspects of the oceans. In order…